By Raanan Geberer
Visiting Tomas Sladek, my Czech immigrant friend, in his new incarnation as a graduate student in engineering at Drexel University in Philadelphia raised a question in my mind: Would his newfound status change him?
After all, when I’d met him as an undergraduate at Brooklyn College, he was a drug user, a frequent shoplifter, an adulterer and a heavy drinker. From time to time, he also made outrageously racist, sexist and anti-Semitic jokes in public, not caring who heard them. All in all, these were not the type of qualities that would be considered ideal in a civil engineer, even though he was also a straight-A student. Would he now “go respectable?”
I followed him down busy Walnut Street -- which was hard to do, given how fast he walked -- to a stately old highrise building topped by a marquee with the name “Samuel Adams Hotel.” Walking into the lobby, I was stunned by the lack of activity. Looking past the desk into the rooms, it appeared that they were all empty. Mystified, I looked at Tomas, who was almost a head taller than I was.
“De hotel vent out of business,” he said rapidly in his deep voice. “Dey’re selling all kinds of tings dat ver in de rooms."
“Why don’t we take a look at what’s on these tables?” I said, motioning toward two tables in the back of the room. “Not so fast, not so fast,” he replied. “Come vit me!”
We took the elevator up to the 10th floor – a floor that was totally deserted. With the plain white rooms and white hallways and the furniture already gone, it looked to me more than anything else like a deserted nursing home. Tomas led me into one of the rooms.
“You see all de old brass doorknobs and chains? Dey must be vorth a lot of money!”
“So?” I asked.
“So?” he countered, smiling. He then reached into the high cowboy boots that every self-respecting twenty-something, myself included, wore in 1979. He took out two screwdrivers.
“Here,” he said. “Vun for you, vun for me!”
We spent the next five minutes or so unscrewing doorknobs and chains and stuffing them into our boots. On the way out of the building, Tomas suddenly went to one of the tables in the back of the lobby, then picked up a pillow as if to appear more legit.
“Is dis a fedder pillow?” he asked the middle-aged female cashier.
“What? … Oh, a feather pillow? Yes. It’s two dollars”
“I’ll take it, please,” he told her, taking out his wallet.
As we left, I found my answer to the questions I’d asked myself earlier that day. Yes, engineering student or not, Tomas was exactly the same as he’d always been.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
The Singing Dentist of Bensonhurst
The Singing Dentist of Bensonhurst
By Raanan Geberer
“When you begin/Begin the beguine/It brings back the night/Of tropical splendor....”
Dr. Pearlman sang as he looked into Rob’s mouth and started poking around, the curbed probe in one hand, the tiny mirror in the other. Ever since Rob had moved to Brooklyn last year, in 1987, his father had tried to get him to see Dr. Pearlman as a dentist because Dr. Pearlman was a cousin and had grown up with his father in the East Bronx, and finally, here he was. Dr. Pearlman’s office was on the second floor of a rundown two-story building on a nondescript commercial street in Bensonhurst whose only redeeming feature was the Italian bakery next door. You walked down a long, narrow hallway to get to Dr. Pearlman’s office.
“A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H/ I got a gal in Kalamazoo/Don’t want to boast but I know she’s the toast/of Kalamazoo...”Rob had never heard of a singing dentist before. Not only does he sing, he thought, but he seems to sing only the songs of his own era, which would be the late 1930s and early ’40s. It’s incredible that this guy is still practicing, he thought. He must be in his late 60s, past retirement age. He idly glanced at the wall – here was a diploma from “New York University Dental School, June 1948.” Probably went to dental school on the G.I. Bill, he thought. Suddenly, he became alarmed when Dr. Pearlman picked up a drill.
“What are you doing with that drill? Aren’t you going to give me an anesthetic or an injection?”
“Well, the X-rays show that the cavity is very small and very near the surface, so we don’t need it. Open your mouth—you’re so good, you’re the best, you’re the champ. Here it comes. I’m not lazy! `I got spurs that jingle jangle jingle/As we go merrily along/And they say, ain’cha glad you’re single/And that song it ain’t too far from wrong’ ...You’re doing great! Don’t worry about anything. I’m the master! `In ‘76 the sky was red/Thunder rumbling overhead/King George couldn’t sleep in his bed/And on that morn/Uncle Sam was born’...You’re so good! Okay, rinse out your mouth!”
Rob bent over, grabbed a paper cup and rinsed his mouth. He watched the blood going down the drain. He had hardly felt anything. “There! That wasn’t so hard, was it? “ Dr. Pearlman asked. “I’m gonna do the filling now! You know, your father did some amazing, heroic things! Like the time he ran into the battlefield and carried the wounded lieutenant on his back to safety! They were gonna give him a medal for that, but, you know how it is!”
Rob had never heard that story before. Then again, his father rarely talked about his past. He was going to ask another question when....
“OK, we’re gonna put in the filling material next. Here it comes! Stay still! I’m not lazy! `Moon over Miami/Shine on as we begin/A dream or two that may come true/As the tide comes in.......’ Okay, just a little bit more. Just stay still. You’re the best! ...Bor’chu es adonai hamvoroch/Boruch atoh adonoi hamvoroch leolom voed/Boruch atoh adonoi/Eloheynoo melech ha’olam ... OK, we’re done here, kid!”
“I heard you singing that Hebrew brocho,” Rob said, referring to the blessing over the Torah that Dr. Pearlman had just intoned. “Wouldn’t those Hasidim I saw in the waiting room object if you sang that when they were here?”
“Fuhgedaboutit!” Dr. Pearlman responded, cheery as ever. “Don’t worry about them. They got nothin’ to say! OK, see you next time?”
“What should I pay?”
“Don’t pay anything! ‘’Cause you’re a relative, I’ll fix the insurance form so the price will be very high, so what they give me will cover what you should pay!”
“You don’t have a secretary?”
“Naah! I used to have a secretary, but if I did now, I’d have to charge you guys more! OK, kid! Give your regards to my father .....NEXT!!!”
By Raanan Geberer
“When you begin/Begin the beguine/It brings back the night/Of tropical splendor....”
Dr. Pearlman sang as he looked into Rob’s mouth and started poking around, the curbed probe in one hand, the tiny mirror in the other. Ever since Rob had moved to Brooklyn last year, in 1987, his father had tried to get him to see Dr. Pearlman as a dentist because Dr. Pearlman was a cousin and had grown up with his father in the East Bronx, and finally, here he was. Dr. Pearlman’s office was on the second floor of a rundown two-story building on a nondescript commercial street in Bensonhurst whose only redeeming feature was the Italian bakery next door. You walked down a long, narrow hallway to get to Dr. Pearlman’s office.
“A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H/ I got a gal in Kalamazoo/Don’t want to boast but I know she’s the toast/of Kalamazoo...”Rob had never heard of a singing dentist before. Not only does he sing, he thought, but he seems to sing only the songs of his own era, which would be the late 1930s and early ’40s. It’s incredible that this guy is still practicing, he thought. He must be in his late 60s, past retirement age. He idly glanced at the wall – here was a diploma from “New York University Dental School, June 1948.” Probably went to dental school on the G.I. Bill, he thought. Suddenly, he became alarmed when Dr. Pearlman picked up a drill.
“What are you doing with that drill? Aren’t you going to give me an anesthetic or an injection?”
“Well, the X-rays show that the cavity is very small and very near the surface, so we don’t need it. Open your mouth—you’re so good, you’re the best, you’re the champ. Here it comes. I’m not lazy! `I got spurs that jingle jangle jingle/As we go merrily along/And they say, ain’cha glad you’re single/And that song it ain’t too far from wrong’ ...You’re doing great! Don’t worry about anything. I’m the master! `In ‘76 the sky was red/Thunder rumbling overhead/King George couldn’t sleep in his bed/And on that morn/Uncle Sam was born’...You’re so good! Okay, rinse out your mouth!”
Rob bent over, grabbed a paper cup and rinsed his mouth. He watched the blood going down the drain. He had hardly felt anything. “There! That wasn’t so hard, was it? “ Dr. Pearlman asked. “I’m gonna do the filling now! You know, your father did some amazing, heroic things! Like the time he ran into the battlefield and carried the wounded lieutenant on his back to safety! They were gonna give him a medal for that, but, you know how it is!”
Rob had never heard that story before. Then again, his father rarely talked about his past. He was going to ask another question when....
“OK, we’re gonna put in the filling material next. Here it comes! Stay still! I’m not lazy! `Moon over Miami/Shine on as we begin/A dream or two that may come true/As the tide comes in.......’ Okay, just a little bit more. Just stay still. You’re the best! ...Bor’chu es adonai hamvoroch/Boruch atoh adonoi hamvoroch leolom voed/Boruch atoh adonoi/Eloheynoo melech ha’olam ... OK, we’re done here, kid!”
“I heard you singing that Hebrew brocho,” Rob said, referring to the blessing over the Torah that Dr. Pearlman had just intoned. “Wouldn’t those Hasidim I saw in the waiting room object if you sang that when they were here?”
“Fuhgedaboutit!” Dr. Pearlman responded, cheery as ever. “Don’t worry about them. They got nothin’ to say! OK, see you next time?”
“What should I pay?”
“Don’t pay anything! ‘’Cause you’re a relative, I’ll fix the insurance form so the price will be very high, so what they give me will cover what you should pay!”
“You don’t have a secretary?”
“Naah! I used to have a secretary, but if I did now, I’d have to charge you guys more! OK, kid! Give your regards to my father .....NEXT!!!”
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Falling in Love by Rhea Lewin Geberer (wife)
Falling In Love
Love
came into
my life
while climbing
down a mountain,
holding onto astonishing roots,
afraid to fall,
afraid of fear.
Crouched and moving,
on a hot sun-lit afternoon,
perspiration making me
a funny face,
a day of wonders
and strange birds
in the sky.
When love came in,
the trees grew branches
before my eyes,
and the flowers deepened,
blues, reds, yellows,
and I needed to stop
for breath;
when I did
I didn’t know
if I could start again --
down the long trail
to the flat earth,
life as time, comings and goings,
after this time, this trip,
this imperfect pink rose given
to me by grace.
Love
came into
my life
while climbing
down a mountain,
holding onto astonishing roots,
afraid to fall,
afraid of fear.
Crouched and moving,
on a hot sun-lit afternoon,
perspiration making me
a funny face,
a day of wonders
and strange birds
in the sky.
When love came in,
the trees grew branches
before my eyes,
and the flowers deepened,
blues, reds, yellows,
and I needed to stop
for breath;
when I did
I didn’t know
if I could start again --
down the long trail
to the flat earth,
life as time, comings and goings,
after this time, this trip,
this imperfect pink rose given
to me by grace.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Unconditional Cat by Rhea Lewin Geberer (wife)
Unconditional Cat
Gravity's art
white-water falls
greys and amber.
Sculptured spaces
crystalline
dominant grace.
Unconditionally cat,
you awakened me
in a bracelet of greeting,
a circle of eyes, round
bodies of orange light -
I return your reflection
without conditions.
Eyes like fire closed in my arms
tired like a peaceable infant -
I return your meal of affection
without condition.
Love unnamed
unspoken
you hold me
without condition.
Gravity's art
white-water falls
greys and amber.
Sculptured spaces
crystalline
dominant grace.
Unconditionally cat,
you awakened me
in a bracelet of greeting,
a circle of eyes, round
bodies of orange light -
I return your reflection
without conditions.
Eyes like fire closed in my arms
tired like a peaceable infant -
I return your meal of affection
without condition.
Love unnamed
unspoken
you hold me
without condition.
Rosh Hashanah by Rhea Lewin Geberer (wife)
Rosh Hashanah Thoughts
Being Jewish
at Rosh Hashanah
is so different
for a woman like me
part-Jew
part-American
Manhattan-West Side
sophisticate,
or so I think
of myself at times;
wearing cool jeans
in my 50s
self-conscious
know-it-all progressive,
ironed with touches feminine
and naive
In the month of Elul
wind and branch
seem the work of God
and I thank Him
and I add to my charity
and I try to be good
but no longer as a child does,
being differently conscious
of goodness and the knowledge
it brings to us
becoming a perceiver
of G-d’s presence.
Limited things,
the mouth’s sudden
bend, words
cheer me
small mitzvahs,
small donations
but many.
There are many people,
many widows
many orphans,
intellects asleep
on lumpy sidewalk --
for many nights --
my favorite cause
I would say, hovering
about them,
Such chutzpah--
I could be their
favorite charity;
no makeup, body-and-
soul-size questionable,
unclouded, I would speak
of a donation
to their pantry
or lunch, and
they in turn
would teach me
to be fearless,
their small donation.
In Rosh Hashanah,
all are
inscribed--
one brimming book.
Being Jewish
at Rosh Hashanah
is so different
for a woman like me
part-Jew
part-American
Manhattan-West Side
sophisticate,
or so I think
of myself at times;
wearing cool jeans
in my 50s
self-conscious
know-it-all progressive,
ironed with touches feminine
and naive
In the month of Elul
wind and branch
seem the work of God
and I thank Him
and I add to my charity
and I try to be good
but no longer as a child does,
being differently conscious
of goodness and the knowledge
it brings to us
becoming a perceiver
of G-d’s presence.
Limited things,
the mouth’s sudden
bend, words
cheer me
small mitzvahs,
small donations
but many.
There are many people,
many widows
many orphans,
intellects asleep
on lumpy sidewalk --
for many nights --
my favorite cause
I would say, hovering
about them,
Such chutzpah--
I could be their
favorite charity;
no makeup, body-and-
soul-size questionable,
unclouded, I would speak
of a donation
to their pantry
or lunch, and
they in turn
would teach me
to be fearless,
their small donation.
In Rosh Hashanah,
all are
inscribed--
one brimming book.
Long Beach by Rhea Lewin Geberer (wife)
[IN PROGRESS}
Long Beach at Four PM
Silver nitrate
drops of ivory
grey and gold.
Sand plovers walking through
food baskets on our blanket
were white and grey like
the edge of sky,
What colour was the light?
An echo of everything flying and hovering.
Birds flew
and birds walked surely
on legs like stalks.
Puffed body
so pretty.
Silver polished skies
are so many colors
I can’t bear it —
don’t want to leave
for the tall buildings
and cement squares of the city;
though dark blue signs say
we can’t go in the water
today.
Long Beach at Four PM
Silver nitrate
drops of ivory
grey and gold.
Sand plovers walking through
food baskets on our blanket
were white and grey like
the edge of sky,
What colour was the light?
An echo of everything flying and hovering.
Birds flew
and birds walked surely
on legs like stalks.
Puffed body
so pretty.
Silver polished skies
are so many colors
I can’t bear it —
don’t want to leave
for the tall buildings
and cement squares of the city;
though dark blue signs say
we can’t go in the water
today.
Geraniums by Rhea Lewin Geberer (wife)
Waiting for Geraniums
Eight green buds sit
atop a slim stem
like pale ladies
around a table
sipping evening
from warm tea
while I wait
for a red flower
promised by the
season’s passion,
the rose
without thorns.
We together are
holding vigil
at my window,
five leaves and I,
for a geranium
bright as jam
and the long
sitting,
a faithless
wait,
repossesses my
ripening. It is
better
to be born
unprepared,
to reek
of geranium
wine,
red sun
boastful days,
mute dreams,
than to
fold in a
cold hand
of doubt
(though knowing
there will be screams
this summer,
sterile yolks
a few green peaches
broken sleep).
Morning brought
the first streak of pink
and one yellowing leaf,
my dreams fervent
but blank to me
as a white plate.
Turn from
the window,
my scarce heart,
before impatience
decreases you;
the clay will keep
as the pot will be sweetened.
Rhea Lewin Geberer
Eight green buds sit
atop a slim stem
like pale ladies
around a table
sipping evening
from warm tea
while I wait
for a red flower
promised by the
season’s passion,
the rose
without thorns.
We together are
holding vigil
at my window,
five leaves and I,
for a geranium
bright as jam
and the long
sitting,
a faithless
wait,
repossesses my
ripening. It is
better
to be born
unprepared,
to reek
of geranium
wine,
red sun
boastful days,
mute dreams,
than to
fold in a
cold hand
of doubt
(though knowing
there will be screams
this summer,
sterile yolks
a few green peaches
broken sleep).
Morning brought
the first streak of pink
and one yellowing leaf,
my dreams fervent
but blank to me
as a white plate.
Turn from
the window,
my scarce heart,
before impatience
decreases you;
the clay will keep
as the pot will be sweetened.
Rhea Lewin Geberer
About My Father by Rhea Lewin Geberer (wife)
About My Father
My face is flushed
with talk and my father --
Israel and Jewish life
before Israel
have made me heady.
The talk is so close
to my heart of all nations,
to the heart not mine
but universal;
all peoples are counted
all persons are me;
I swim like an arrow
through dark blue waves.
I need to cool down
like I need the heat of
my soul deepening.
My face is flushed
with talk and my father --
Israel and Jewish life
before Israel
have made me heady.
The talk is so close
to my heart of all nations,
to the heart not mine
but universal;
all peoples are counted
all persons are me;
I swim like an arrow
through dark blue waves.
I need to cool down
like I need the heat of
my soul deepening.
My Cat of One by Rhea Lewin Geberer (wife)
My Cat of One
As I approach
and her arm
expands
towards me
(her foreleg really
though hard not
to see a hand
reaching),
she is suddenly
the child I never
had, the one-year old
whose mother opens
the bedroom door
to eyes lit by
knowledge beyond
days and years
to a face fired
by fragrances,
an ingathering
of my desserts.
I am not
a goddess
and neither is
my cat a pilgrim,
but to her
I swim in air,
tango as
a dream. She,
though, is real:
a refining of
non-combatant
passion
an Other
smelling of salt
small needs
a clinging seal.
God, how opulent
for my old years
of loyalty
and stone --
the sound of round body
I have wanted
for these arms
of drying rock!
As I approach
and her arm
expands
towards me
(her foreleg really
though hard not
to see a hand
reaching),
she is suddenly
the child I never
had, the one-year old
whose mother opens
the bedroom door
to eyes lit by
knowledge beyond
days and years
to a face fired
by fragrances,
an ingathering
of my desserts.
I am not
a goddess
and neither is
my cat a pilgrim,
but to her
I swim in air,
tango as
a dream. She,
though, is real:
a refining of
non-combatant
passion
an Other
smelling of salt
small needs
a clinging seal.
God, how opulent
for my old years
of loyalty
and stone --
the sound of round body
I have wanted
for these arms
of drying rock!
Remembrance by Rhea Lewin Geberer (wife)
Remembrance
My white trees
are here again
prom dress
wedding skirt
young trees
whirling
round and again
in flower time
letting sun
into ticklish
secret lace
of hearts.
The green summer
will forget
these touchstone
teenage blossoms;
To be human is to remember--
collecting my pink lit
and discolored roses
from their earth,
recollecting the old ground
in truth and shifting prisms,
a blooming spring
my silken walking stick.
RLG
4/13/97
My white trees
are here again
prom dress
wedding skirt
young trees
whirling
round and again
in flower time
letting sun
into ticklish
secret lace
of hearts.
The green summer
will forget
these touchstone
teenage blossoms;
To be human is to remember--
collecting my pink lit
and discolored roses
from their earth,
recollecting the old ground
in truth and shifting prisms,
a blooming spring
my silken walking stick.
RLG
4/13/97
Saturday, September 6, 2008
The Kingdom of Heaven is Within You
(NOTE--originally published in "Polseguera" on the web.
The Kingdom of Heaven Is Within You
By Raanan Geberer
I geev you de el-lis-dee, yah?”
With those words, Tomas Sladek walked from the kitchen to the gigantic 1920s-style living room, carrying two tabs of acid. Rob hoped that they would be as good as the orange sunshine he had tripped on at the State University at Albany, almost 10 years ago. He also hoped it wouldn’t be like that bad purple acid that he’d taken soon after that. It had exaggerated the sensation of gravity so much that every step seemed like he weighed 500 pounds. He had sworn off psychedelics for good after that — until now.
Rob still couldn’t believe the good fortune he’d encountered soon after he moved to 181st Street when, while buying food at a nearby grocery store, he discovered Tomas, a young engineering student, Tomas’ wife, and their roommate Rosa. He desperately needed new friends, especially friends who were intellectual or creative. After talking to them for what seemed like hours about Allen Ginsberg, Stravinsky and Miles Davis, Rob was even more overjoyed to find that they all lived on Fort Washington Avenue, right around the corner. Their jeans, long hair, work shirts and Gauloises cigarettes were apparently still in style in communist Czechoslovakia, from which they had escaped a few years beforehand. That style was already rapidly fading in New York in favor of the black-clad, short-haired, shades-wearing punk look. Taking acid was part of that same hippie thing. Rob wondered how Tomas had even gotten a hold of it. After all, it was 1980 now, not 1970.
Tomas offered Rob a glass of Diet Sprite, and Rob swallowed the tab. The Grateful Dead music in the background, the gray cat crawling under, around and on top of the furniture, the well-worn copy of Carlos Castaneda on the couch and the American Indian baskets spread throughout the room all contributed to the vibe. “Where are Dana and Rosa?” he asked.
“Dana is out, studying for her anthropology exam,” Tomas answered, idly shutting off the record player and turning the TV on to get the Yankees-Red Sox game. Dana was Tomas’ wife, although frequently his wife in name only. “Rosa is in her room, reading. She vasn’t interested. She can’t take de ellisdee — she is too psychotical already!” He laughed uncontrollably.
Rob hoped the LSD wouldn’t have too much of an effect on him. Later in the afternoon, he would have to visit his latest semi-girlfriend, Carol Rossinsky, in Riverdale. Carol was very problematic. She shared none of Rob’s interests. Rob listened to rock and modern jazz; Carol’s tastes ran strictly to the opera and the symphony. Rob’s favorite authors were Ginsberg and Kerouac; hers, Emily Dickinson and Wordsworth. She wore plain black or gray polyester skirts and shapeless white blouses — probably to hide her portly figure, Rob suspected. All in all, he felt, she was more like a woman of his mother’s generation than of his own.
The one thing they shared was sexual attraction. They were incredibly turned on by each other, so much so that sometimes, when they walked down the street, they would kiss and grind against each other at every streetlight. That’s basically how they met — at a “young Jewish singles” event they both attended, they stared at each other for what seemed like an hour, they talked briefly, then they went in the hallway and started kissing passionately.
Yet, they rarely got a chance to make love because even though Carol was the same age as Rob, 27, she still lived with her parents. Once, she came over to his apartment and had sex with him, but she later said the experience made her feel “guilty as hell.” As a matter of fact, she had been a virgin until just last year. For a week now, he had resolved to break up with her the next time they saw each other.
On TV, Ron Guidry was pitching to Jim Rice. Tomas watched the game briefly, the turned it off, putting on the record player again, this time a Thelonius Monk LP. Rob took a deep breath. He felt an unusual sense of relaxation.
“You know, Tomas,” he said, suddenly, “I’m supposed to see Carol at 4:30 this afternoon.”
Tomas shook his head. “Rob, she ees not de girl for you.”
“Well, but....”
“Dat’s OK! I von’t let you lose track of de time. I’ll let you know when it’s time for you to go! In de meantime, just relax.” Rob closed his eyes and felt just like he was floating on his back, in the middle of a lake. The cat, Viktor, came near, and Rob petted him on the head. When Viktor gently bit his finger, Rob didn’t even care.
“So,” Rob asked, looking up at the taller Tomas, “how’s school?”
“School’s OK, but I’m broke! I got to wait until next week, ven I start my job at de lab again. Dis system is so unfair! I can’t vait til I’m a finally an engineer!”
“That’s too bad,” Rob answered. One of Tomas’ chief complaints was that, although he was one semester shy of finishing engineering school in Czechoslovakia, the requirements here were different, and he had to start all over again. Rob sympathized with him because he was in a similar, although much less severe, predicament — he had a degree in city planning but he wasn’t able to find a job in his chosen field yet, so he worked as a low-level bureaucrat for the city.
Tomas lit up a Gauloise and took a puff. “You know, Rob, at time like dis, I think about my fader. Because of de way ve left Czechoslovakia, I can’t even write to him. I have to write to my uncle in Germany, den he writes to my fader! Eef I ver to go back der, I vuld be arrested!”
Rob didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. “Things have to change, sooner or later,” he finally said. “I always hoped that the U.S. and the Soviet bloc, um, starting from opposite ends, would both evolve toward the same direction, toward a Western European-style social democracy, or, if you want to use the term, democratic socialism.”
“Vell, you can kiss dat idea goodbye if dat stupid cowboy actor becomes elected president dees November!” Tomas replied emphatically. “But Czechoslovakia — yes, change, more freedom, ees inevitable. But I hope eet doesn’t become like dis goddamn U.S. All dees materialism! Dese advertisements, dese shopping malls! Dey just vant to make money!”
“But, like, doesn’t Sam, the shoe guy, also want to make money?” asked Rob, playing devil’s advocate. Everybody knew Sam, the Italian shoe repair guy on 181st Street, with his 11 kids, his missing teeth and his broken English.
Tomas waved his hand. “Sam, he just wants to survive. Same thing vit all de oder guys who own small stores. But dees people who own de malls, dey vant to live GOOD!”
Rob stared at the ceiling. The floor seemed to be rocking back and forth under him, but in a nice way. He felt the need to talk about his background, too.
“You know, my parents used to live in Israel?”
“Yah, I think you told me. You ver born der, right?”
“I think I’d like to go back there to live someday.”
“Vot. Vit all dees fighting? Are you crazy?”
“Well, I don’t really like what’s going on now, and I basically agree with the Israeli left wing and support a Palestinian state. But that’s only part of it.”
“Vot do you mean?”
“When I saw the Wailing Wall, the old neighborhoods like Yemin Moshe, the Jerusalem windmill, the ruins in Bet She’an, I felt a strong connection. I know I’m not formally religious — I’m not kosher, I don’t observe Shabbas, I only go to synagogue two or three times a year — but I have a strong belief in God. And I can’t help feel that as bad as things are in the Mideast, it’s all somehow part of God’s plan, the Biblical prophecies are coming true, and when God wills it, there will be peace.”
“Rob, ven you talk dees way, you know like, vot you said, Biblical, I don’t understand it.”
Rob didn’t answer. He couldn’t expect Tomas to understand — he came from a part of the world that was traditionally hostile to Jews, and, on top of it, from a society that for years had denied all spirituality and mocked any vestiges of religion. Even though Tomas had rejected that society, Rob thought, 20 years of communist education had to have had an effect on him.
Seeing Rob’s uneasiness, Tomas decided to take another path. “You mind if I just turn on de game on de teevee for a minute?”
“Definitely!” Rob was pleased at how Tomas, after only a few years in the states, had grown to love baseball. Both looked at the screen. Mike Torres was on the mound, Rickey Henderson was at bat. There was a full count, 3 balls, 2 strikes. Torres threw a fast ball, Rickey struck out. Rob turned the set off and turned the music back up.
“Tomas?”
“Yes?”
“You sure Rosa is in the other room?”
“Definitely. I didn’t hear de door close.”
“I’ll go to say hello to her.”
Rosa’s room was just down the hall, but under the influence of LSD, it seemed halfway across the world. After a brief initial flirtation when they’d met, Rob had stayed away from Rosa. Tomas was always putting her down. Rosa was promiscuous, Rosa shoplifted right and left, Rosa hung out with hard-core punks, Rosa made up outrageous lies to get jobs — jobs she always lost in a week or two after it became clear that she didn’t have the experience. Implicit in Tomas’ rap about Rosa was a criticism of his wife, Dana, for being friendly with Rosa in the first place.
In the room, Rosa was relaxing in bed, reading a book in Czech. She was dark-haired, dark-eyed, with a hint of Gypsy ancestry. On the walls were black velvet paintings. She looked up at Rob. “Hi, Rob” she said in a weak voice.
“Hi. That’s a nice scarf.”
“Thank you. I got it at de street fair last week.”
“So how are you?”
“OK. I met some new friends. Dey are Poland people, you know, from Poland. I vent vit dem to dees punk club in East Village last night, dey said dey’d get me a job behind de bar.”
Rob lay down next to her, stroked her hair, kissed her lips and neck. He didn’t feel guilty — he and Carol hadn’t reached the step where they’d agreed to be full-fledged boyfriend and girlfriend. He moved his hand over Rosa’s breast. She brushed it away.
“Well, uh, I guess....”
“You guess gude. But just playing, like dis, is fine.”
He cuddled with her and kissed her briefly, then told her he was going back to talk to Tomas. As he was leaving the room, she said, “I vant to go to California next month to see my friend. Could you geev me a hundred dollars?”
“Well, I don’t know...”
“You geev me a hundred dollars, den you know vot happens?”
Rob got the point, but now, he wasn’t interested. As Rosa lit up a cigarette --not a Gauloise this time, but a Lucky — Rob left the room. He walked to the bathroom to take a piss, then went back to Tomas, who was playing with the cat. “Ver you making love vit Rosa?” Tomas suspected.
“No, not really.”
“You should be vit her. Go, go to her.”
“No, nothing went on.”
“Dat’s hard to believe. I screwed her myself!” Rob was only mildly surprised. Tomas once again turned the music down and put on the TV. The score was 6-2, Red Sox. The Yankees had replaced Guidry with Goose Gossage, but still, things weren’t going to turn around so fast. Rob turned it off.
Rob began to feel the beauty in everything around him — the same mood he got into when he drank too much. He flashed back to that orange sunshine trip he had taken in Albany. John DiGiovanni, Richie Goldberg, Elaine Cohen. In his mind, they were frozen in time, tripping in that dorm room. Hmm ... as far as he knew, they were all living in New York. As a matter of fact, Richie Goldberg lived here in Washington Heights, around 192nd Street near the park, although he hardly ever saw him. He went to the phone, looked up the number in the phone book and started dialing — he couldn’t wait to share his good fortune about the trip.
“Rob, who are you calling?”
“I’m calling one of the guys I used to take LSD with up at school. It’ll be great.” In his mind, he was stepping back into that room in Albany as if nothing had happened in 10 years. He was disappointed when the phone kept ringing and no one answered.
“Rob! Leesten to me! He ees not tripping,” Tomas exclaimed. It’s as if he can read my mind, Rob thought. Dejectedly, he put the phone down. He looked at the clock. Three-thirty. Soon he’d have to leave to see Carol. He was glad he had the presence of mind, through his LSD-induced haze, to remember that.
“Tomas,” Rob said, “Look, well, I’ve got to leave to see Carol.”
“OK,” Tomas answered. “I call you tomorrow, yah? See you.”
Rob started walking down the foyer toward the door. When he got to Rosa’s room, he yelled through the narrow crack in the doorway, “Goodbye, Rosa! Say hello to Dana!” He left the apartment and waited for the elevator.
He got off at the ground floor, opened the door to the street and — he was totally overwhelmed!
The world seemed like a magnificent festival of color and light. All the people seemed to radiate positive energy. Everything was full of splendor — that car there, that streetlamp here, the woman pushing the baby carriage, the old Russian man with the hat. They were all his friends! No need to wait for the Messiah — it was right here! Now he knew what Jesus meant in the Gospel of Thomas when he said “the kingdom of Heaven is within you!”
He turned the corner and went into Kevin’s grocery store to buy a Coke and a bag of corn chips. Everyone in the neighborhood knew that Kevin was a jerk. A few weeks ago, he was getting a box of cereal for Rob from the shelves, saying nasty things about Blacks and Hispanics as usual, when a young Black woman came in. Immediately he said, in a loud voice, “Why, I’m so even-minded, I wouldn’t even care if there was a Negro pope!” Rob didn’t believe that woman was fooled for a minute, never mind the fact that people hadn’t used the word “Negro” for more than 10 years. But today, all Rob could see of Kevin was his big grin, his friendliness, his desire to help everyone who came into the store. It was as it Kevin, in the past, had been only two-dimensional --now, he was three-dimensional, larger than life.
As Rob continued to walk down the street, he saw Sam, the old Italian shoe repair man that he and Rob had talked about earlier, standing in front of his store. “Hey,” Sam said, “I know where-a you going! You go-a to Riverdale!” Last month, Rob had told him about Carol, and ever since, Sam had teased him about “going to Riverdale.” “That’s right,” Rob said, smiling happily, “I’m going to Riverdale.”
His mind turned to Carol. He’d planned to break off the relationship today. But now, she, too, began to take on a different light in Rob’s mind. She was a cherub, a wonderful, beautiful fat cherub! So what if she didn’t meet conventional standards of beauty? So what if she still lived with her parents? That was only temporary, right? All he envisioned now was her warm smile full of genuine feeling for him, her sparkling eyes, her giving, caring attitude.
No, he wouldn’t break off with him! On the contrary — he’d marry her!
And so, Rob Rothstein, high on LSD, headed to Broadway to catch the Number 10 bus to Carol Rossinsky’s house, where he would tell her he loved her and ask her to marry him.
The Kingdom of Heaven Is Within You
By Raanan Geberer
I geev you de el-lis-dee, yah?”
With those words, Tomas Sladek walked from the kitchen to the gigantic 1920s-style living room, carrying two tabs of acid. Rob hoped that they would be as good as the orange sunshine he had tripped on at the State University at Albany, almost 10 years ago. He also hoped it wouldn’t be like that bad purple acid that he’d taken soon after that. It had exaggerated the sensation of gravity so much that every step seemed like he weighed 500 pounds. He had sworn off psychedelics for good after that — until now.
Rob still couldn’t believe the good fortune he’d encountered soon after he moved to 181st Street when, while buying food at a nearby grocery store, he discovered Tomas, a young engineering student, Tomas’ wife, and their roommate Rosa. He desperately needed new friends, especially friends who were intellectual or creative. After talking to them for what seemed like hours about Allen Ginsberg, Stravinsky and Miles Davis, Rob was even more overjoyed to find that they all lived on Fort Washington Avenue, right around the corner. Their jeans, long hair, work shirts and Gauloises cigarettes were apparently still in style in communist Czechoslovakia, from which they had escaped a few years beforehand. That style was already rapidly fading in New York in favor of the black-clad, short-haired, shades-wearing punk look. Taking acid was part of that same hippie thing. Rob wondered how Tomas had even gotten a hold of it. After all, it was 1980 now, not 1970.
Tomas offered Rob a glass of Diet Sprite, and Rob swallowed the tab. The Grateful Dead music in the background, the gray cat crawling under, around and on top of the furniture, the well-worn copy of Carlos Castaneda on the couch and the American Indian baskets spread throughout the room all contributed to the vibe. “Where are Dana and Rosa?” he asked.
“Dana is out, studying for her anthropology exam,” Tomas answered, idly shutting off the record player and turning the TV on to get the Yankees-Red Sox game. Dana was Tomas’ wife, although frequently his wife in name only. “Rosa is in her room, reading. She vasn’t interested. She can’t take de ellisdee — she is too psychotical already!” He laughed uncontrollably.
Rob hoped the LSD wouldn’t have too much of an effect on him. Later in the afternoon, he would have to visit his latest semi-girlfriend, Carol Rossinsky, in Riverdale. Carol was very problematic. She shared none of Rob’s interests. Rob listened to rock and modern jazz; Carol’s tastes ran strictly to the opera and the symphony. Rob’s favorite authors were Ginsberg and Kerouac; hers, Emily Dickinson and Wordsworth. She wore plain black or gray polyester skirts and shapeless white blouses — probably to hide her portly figure, Rob suspected. All in all, he felt, she was more like a woman of his mother’s generation than of his own.
The one thing they shared was sexual attraction. They were incredibly turned on by each other, so much so that sometimes, when they walked down the street, they would kiss and grind against each other at every streetlight. That’s basically how they met — at a “young Jewish singles” event they both attended, they stared at each other for what seemed like an hour, they talked briefly, then they went in the hallway and started kissing passionately.
Yet, they rarely got a chance to make love because even though Carol was the same age as Rob, 27, she still lived with her parents. Once, she came over to his apartment and had sex with him, but she later said the experience made her feel “guilty as hell.” As a matter of fact, she had been a virgin until just last year. For a week now, he had resolved to break up with her the next time they saw each other.
On TV, Ron Guidry was pitching to Jim Rice. Tomas watched the game briefly, the turned it off, putting on the record player again, this time a Thelonius Monk LP. Rob took a deep breath. He felt an unusual sense of relaxation.
“You know, Tomas,” he said, suddenly, “I’m supposed to see Carol at 4:30 this afternoon.”
Tomas shook his head. “Rob, she ees not de girl for you.”
“Well, but....”
“Dat’s OK! I von’t let you lose track of de time. I’ll let you know when it’s time for you to go! In de meantime, just relax.” Rob closed his eyes and felt just like he was floating on his back, in the middle of a lake. The cat, Viktor, came near, and Rob petted him on the head. When Viktor gently bit his finger, Rob didn’t even care.
“So,” Rob asked, looking up at the taller Tomas, “how’s school?”
“School’s OK, but I’m broke! I got to wait until next week, ven I start my job at de lab again. Dis system is so unfair! I can’t vait til I’m a finally an engineer!”
“That’s too bad,” Rob answered. One of Tomas’ chief complaints was that, although he was one semester shy of finishing engineering school in Czechoslovakia, the requirements here were different, and he had to start all over again. Rob sympathized with him because he was in a similar, although much less severe, predicament — he had a degree in city planning but he wasn’t able to find a job in his chosen field yet, so he worked as a low-level bureaucrat for the city.
Tomas lit up a Gauloise and took a puff. “You know, Rob, at time like dis, I think about my fader. Because of de way ve left Czechoslovakia, I can’t even write to him. I have to write to my uncle in Germany, den he writes to my fader! Eef I ver to go back der, I vuld be arrested!”
Rob didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. “Things have to change, sooner or later,” he finally said. “I always hoped that the U.S. and the Soviet bloc, um, starting from opposite ends, would both evolve toward the same direction, toward a Western European-style social democracy, or, if you want to use the term, democratic socialism.”
“Vell, you can kiss dat idea goodbye if dat stupid cowboy actor becomes elected president dees November!” Tomas replied emphatically. “But Czechoslovakia — yes, change, more freedom, ees inevitable. But I hope eet doesn’t become like dis goddamn U.S. All dees materialism! Dese advertisements, dese shopping malls! Dey just vant to make money!”
“But, like, doesn’t Sam, the shoe guy, also want to make money?” asked Rob, playing devil’s advocate. Everybody knew Sam, the Italian shoe repair guy on 181st Street, with his 11 kids, his missing teeth and his broken English.
Tomas waved his hand. “Sam, he just wants to survive. Same thing vit all de oder guys who own small stores. But dees people who own de malls, dey vant to live GOOD!”
Rob stared at the ceiling. The floor seemed to be rocking back and forth under him, but in a nice way. He felt the need to talk about his background, too.
“You know, my parents used to live in Israel?”
“Yah, I think you told me. You ver born der, right?”
“I think I’d like to go back there to live someday.”
“Vot. Vit all dees fighting? Are you crazy?”
“Well, I don’t really like what’s going on now, and I basically agree with the Israeli left wing and support a Palestinian state. But that’s only part of it.”
“Vot do you mean?”
“When I saw the Wailing Wall, the old neighborhoods like Yemin Moshe, the Jerusalem windmill, the ruins in Bet She’an, I felt a strong connection. I know I’m not formally religious — I’m not kosher, I don’t observe Shabbas, I only go to synagogue two or three times a year — but I have a strong belief in God. And I can’t help feel that as bad as things are in the Mideast, it’s all somehow part of God’s plan, the Biblical prophecies are coming true, and when God wills it, there will be peace.”
“Rob, ven you talk dees way, you know like, vot you said, Biblical, I don’t understand it.”
Rob didn’t answer. He couldn’t expect Tomas to understand — he came from a part of the world that was traditionally hostile to Jews, and, on top of it, from a society that for years had denied all spirituality and mocked any vestiges of religion. Even though Tomas had rejected that society, Rob thought, 20 years of communist education had to have had an effect on him.
Seeing Rob’s uneasiness, Tomas decided to take another path. “You mind if I just turn on de game on de teevee for a minute?”
“Definitely!” Rob was pleased at how Tomas, after only a few years in the states, had grown to love baseball. Both looked at the screen. Mike Torres was on the mound, Rickey Henderson was at bat. There was a full count, 3 balls, 2 strikes. Torres threw a fast ball, Rickey struck out. Rob turned the set off and turned the music back up.
“Tomas?”
“Yes?”
“You sure Rosa is in the other room?”
“Definitely. I didn’t hear de door close.”
“I’ll go to say hello to her.”
Rosa’s room was just down the hall, but under the influence of LSD, it seemed halfway across the world. After a brief initial flirtation when they’d met, Rob had stayed away from Rosa. Tomas was always putting her down. Rosa was promiscuous, Rosa shoplifted right and left, Rosa hung out with hard-core punks, Rosa made up outrageous lies to get jobs — jobs she always lost in a week or two after it became clear that she didn’t have the experience. Implicit in Tomas’ rap about Rosa was a criticism of his wife, Dana, for being friendly with Rosa in the first place.
In the room, Rosa was relaxing in bed, reading a book in Czech. She was dark-haired, dark-eyed, with a hint of Gypsy ancestry. On the walls were black velvet paintings. She looked up at Rob. “Hi, Rob” she said in a weak voice.
“Hi. That’s a nice scarf.”
“Thank you. I got it at de street fair last week.”
“So how are you?”
“OK. I met some new friends. Dey are Poland people, you know, from Poland. I vent vit dem to dees punk club in East Village last night, dey said dey’d get me a job behind de bar.”
Rob lay down next to her, stroked her hair, kissed her lips and neck. He didn’t feel guilty — he and Carol hadn’t reached the step where they’d agreed to be full-fledged boyfriend and girlfriend. He moved his hand over Rosa’s breast. She brushed it away.
“Well, uh, I guess....”
“You guess gude. But just playing, like dis, is fine.”
He cuddled with her and kissed her briefly, then told her he was going back to talk to Tomas. As he was leaving the room, she said, “I vant to go to California next month to see my friend. Could you geev me a hundred dollars?”
“Well, I don’t know...”
“You geev me a hundred dollars, den you know vot happens?”
Rob got the point, but now, he wasn’t interested. As Rosa lit up a cigarette --not a Gauloise this time, but a Lucky — Rob left the room. He walked to the bathroom to take a piss, then went back to Tomas, who was playing with the cat. “Ver you making love vit Rosa?” Tomas suspected.
“No, not really.”
“You should be vit her. Go, go to her.”
“No, nothing went on.”
“Dat’s hard to believe. I screwed her myself!” Rob was only mildly surprised. Tomas once again turned the music down and put on the TV. The score was 6-2, Red Sox. The Yankees had replaced Guidry with Goose Gossage, but still, things weren’t going to turn around so fast. Rob turned it off.
Rob began to feel the beauty in everything around him — the same mood he got into when he drank too much. He flashed back to that orange sunshine trip he had taken in Albany. John DiGiovanni, Richie Goldberg, Elaine Cohen. In his mind, they were frozen in time, tripping in that dorm room. Hmm ... as far as he knew, they were all living in New York. As a matter of fact, Richie Goldberg lived here in Washington Heights, around 192nd Street near the park, although he hardly ever saw him. He went to the phone, looked up the number in the phone book and started dialing — he couldn’t wait to share his good fortune about the trip.
“Rob, who are you calling?”
“I’m calling one of the guys I used to take LSD with up at school. It’ll be great.” In his mind, he was stepping back into that room in Albany as if nothing had happened in 10 years. He was disappointed when the phone kept ringing and no one answered.
“Rob! Leesten to me! He ees not tripping,” Tomas exclaimed. It’s as if he can read my mind, Rob thought. Dejectedly, he put the phone down. He looked at the clock. Three-thirty. Soon he’d have to leave to see Carol. He was glad he had the presence of mind, through his LSD-induced haze, to remember that.
“Tomas,” Rob said, “Look, well, I’ve got to leave to see Carol.”
“OK,” Tomas answered. “I call you tomorrow, yah? See you.”
Rob started walking down the foyer toward the door. When he got to Rosa’s room, he yelled through the narrow crack in the doorway, “Goodbye, Rosa! Say hello to Dana!” He left the apartment and waited for the elevator.
He got off at the ground floor, opened the door to the street and — he was totally overwhelmed!
The world seemed like a magnificent festival of color and light. All the people seemed to radiate positive energy. Everything was full of splendor — that car there, that streetlamp here, the woman pushing the baby carriage, the old Russian man with the hat. They were all his friends! No need to wait for the Messiah — it was right here! Now he knew what Jesus meant in the Gospel of Thomas when he said “the kingdom of Heaven is within you!”
He turned the corner and went into Kevin’s grocery store to buy a Coke and a bag of corn chips. Everyone in the neighborhood knew that Kevin was a jerk. A few weeks ago, he was getting a box of cereal for Rob from the shelves, saying nasty things about Blacks and Hispanics as usual, when a young Black woman came in. Immediately he said, in a loud voice, “Why, I’m so even-minded, I wouldn’t even care if there was a Negro pope!” Rob didn’t believe that woman was fooled for a minute, never mind the fact that people hadn’t used the word “Negro” for more than 10 years. But today, all Rob could see of Kevin was his big grin, his friendliness, his desire to help everyone who came into the store. It was as it Kevin, in the past, had been only two-dimensional --now, he was three-dimensional, larger than life.
As Rob continued to walk down the street, he saw Sam, the old Italian shoe repair man that he and Rob had talked about earlier, standing in front of his store. “Hey,” Sam said, “I know where-a you going! You go-a to Riverdale!” Last month, Rob had told him about Carol, and ever since, Sam had teased him about “going to Riverdale.” “That’s right,” Rob said, smiling happily, “I’m going to Riverdale.”
His mind turned to Carol. He’d planned to break off the relationship today. But now, she, too, began to take on a different light in Rob’s mind. She was a cherub, a wonderful, beautiful fat cherub! So what if she didn’t meet conventional standards of beauty? So what if she still lived with her parents? That was only temporary, right? All he envisioned now was her warm smile full of genuine feeling for him, her sparkling eyes, her giving, caring attitude.
No, he wouldn’t break off with him! On the contrary — he’d marry her!
And so, Rob Rothstein, high on LSD, headed to Broadway to catch the Number 10 bus to Carol Rossinsky’s house, where he would tell her he loved her and ask her to marry him.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Hillary Clinton and the Cult of Personality
When the mainstream media saw Hillary Clinton speaking at the Democratic Convention, they saw someone who balanced her duty to the party, to support Barack Obama and to move her “troops” over to Barack’s cause, with her desire to keep her own options open in 2012 or 2016.
But to me, it seemed like her speech was 80 percent of the former and only 20 percent of the latter.
In the 1980s, the rock group Living Colour wrote a song called “The Cult of Personality.” It was about charismatic leaders, some “good” – JFK, Gandhi -- and some evil – Joseph Stalin, Mussolini. Let’s take a look at some of its lyrics:
“I know your anger, I know your dreams
I’ve been everything you want to be
I see the things you need to be
I’m the smiling face on your TV
I’m the cult of personality.”
Hillary’s speech fits that description to a “T.” She kept talking about the people she had met on the campaign trail, such as the woman who had no health insurance but two autistic children, or the person who comes home at 5, eats dinner, then heads out to work the night shift.
I’m sure people this really exist, but her hidden message is that she is the one who has the REAL answers to all their problems. A sociologist who seriously studies the problems poor people face every day would also speak about these issues, but would do so with much more complexity.
Notice that for at least 20 minutes or so, before she even got around to Obama, Hillary mainly talked about herself, her campaign and the people she met in her trips around the country. Then she made a few remarks about supporting Obama and about how Michelle Obama is a nice person.
Compared to what Hillary has said about people she REALLY likes – for example, her calling Congresswoman Nita Lowey “one of the finest examples of a public servant I’ve ever met” – her remarks about the Obamas are tepid indeed.
Looking back, can anyone imagine Lyndon Johnson making such an egocentric speech at the 1960 Democratic convention after he was defeated by John F. Kennedy? Or can you imagine Eugene McCarthy making a similar speech in 1968 after Hubert Humphrey won the nomination? If they had, they would have been shunned by the party faithful for years afterward. More recently, I remember Tom Harkin’s speech at the 1992 convention, and it was not about Tom Harkin, who had lost his quest for the nomination. It was about the victorious candidate, Bill Clinton.
After the convention, according to the New York Times, one of Hillary’s supporters was asked whether she would support Obama. “Of course,” she said. “Hillary told us to!” That’s one of the scariest things to come out of this campaign – a group of people who are loyal not to principles, not to a political agenda, but to a charismatic leader, in this case Hillary. And that’s the essence of the Cult of Personality.
Originally published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle
But to me, it seemed like her speech was 80 percent of the former and only 20 percent of the latter.
In the 1980s, the rock group Living Colour wrote a song called “The Cult of Personality.” It was about charismatic leaders, some “good” – JFK, Gandhi -- and some evil – Joseph Stalin, Mussolini. Let’s take a look at some of its lyrics:
“I know your anger, I know your dreams
I’ve been everything you want to be
I see the things you need to be
I’m the smiling face on your TV
I’m the cult of personality.”
Hillary’s speech fits that description to a “T.” She kept talking about the people she had met on the campaign trail, such as the woman who had no health insurance but two autistic children, or the person who comes home at 5, eats dinner, then heads out to work the night shift.
I’m sure people this really exist, but her hidden message is that she is the one who has the REAL answers to all their problems. A sociologist who seriously studies the problems poor people face every day would also speak about these issues, but would do so with much more complexity.
Notice that for at least 20 minutes or so, before she even got around to Obama, Hillary mainly talked about herself, her campaign and the people she met in her trips around the country. Then she made a few remarks about supporting Obama and about how Michelle Obama is a nice person.
Compared to what Hillary has said about people she REALLY likes – for example, her calling Congresswoman Nita Lowey “one of the finest examples of a public servant I’ve ever met” – her remarks about the Obamas are tepid indeed.
Looking back, can anyone imagine Lyndon Johnson making such an egocentric speech at the 1960 Democratic convention after he was defeated by John F. Kennedy? Or can you imagine Eugene McCarthy making a similar speech in 1968 after Hubert Humphrey won the nomination? If they had, they would have been shunned by the party faithful for years afterward. More recently, I remember Tom Harkin’s speech at the 1992 convention, and it was not about Tom Harkin, who had lost his quest for the nomination. It was about the victorious candidate, Bill Clinton.
After the convention, according to the New York Times, one of Hillary’s supporters was asked whether she would support Obama. “Of course,” she said. “Hillary told us to!” That’s one of the scariest things to come out of this campaign – a group of people who are loyal not to principles, not to a political agenda, but to a charismatic leader, in this case Hillary. And that’s the essence of the Cult of Personality.
Originally published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Why Isn't MTA Sharing in Upbeat Rail Outlook
By Raanan Geberer
Brooklyn Eagle
The other day, I picked up a publication that I rarely read -- Barron's. As a longtime railfan, the cover story both surprised and intrigued me, "All Aboard!" with the subhead, "with gas prices high, traffic gnarly and imports buoyant, railroads look like terrific long-term investments."
The article didn't only focus on freight rail, long acknowledged as the most profitable segment of the industry. It also focused on passenger rail, and even subways and trolley lines. One of the illustrations depicted the Washington metro, and the article tells us that DC is planning to extend service from Georgetown out to Dulles Airport. It also mentioned new commuter rail being developed in Salt Lake City, a 15 percent rise in ridership in California's Capitol Corridor rail line, and "booming Amtrak."
I just recently, in fact, took a trip to Washington, and saw for myself how efficient and modern their subway system is. I also took note of Baltimore's new subway and light-rail system. All in all, according to Barron's, "over the past five years, the Dow Jones railroad Index has shot up 250 percent."
Contrast this, however, with New York City (I was about to say "Fun City," but younger people wouldn't get the reference). Here, the opening of the Second Avenue Subway is now not expected before 2015, and the MTA is warning that it may have to scale back one of its major construction projects, which also include the Long Island Railroad's East Side Access project and the No. 7 train's extension to the Javits Center. Moreover, the MTA has now requested its second fare hike in two years.
If one is to take all this seriously, it appears that the MTA and its component railroads -- the New York City subway system, the Long Island Railroad and MetroNorth -- are the only systems that aren't booming in the U.S. and Canada. Even across the river, in New Jersey, the Hudson-Bergen light rail, or trolley, line gets extended a few stops every year.
From this, what can we conclude?
I guess we can conclude that the MTA is incredibly mismanaged, that its internal structure is seriously flawed, or that the money is going somewhere that it's not supposed to be going. Or maybe all three. I hope that Governor Patterson orders an independent audit of the MTA -- the sooner, the better!
Originally published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Brooklyn Eagle
The other day, I picked up a publication that I rarely read -- Barron's. As a longtime railfan, the cover story both surprised and intrigued me, "All Aboard!" with the subhead, "with gas prices high, traffic gnarly and imports buoyant, railroads look like terrific long-term investments."
The article didn't only focus on freight rail, long acknowledged as the most profitable segment of the industry. It also focused on passenger rail, and even subways and trolley lines. One of the illustrations depicted the Washington metro, and the article tells us that DC is planning to extend service from Georgetown out to Dulles Airport. It also mentioned new commuter rail being developed in Salt Lake City, a 15 percent rise in ridership in California's Capitol Corridor rail line, and "booming Amtrak."
I just recently, in fact, took a trip to Washington, and saw for myself how efficient and modern their subway system is. I also took note of Baltimore's new subway and light-rail system. All in all, according to Barron's, "over the past five years, the Dow Jones railroad Index has shot up 250 percent."
Contrast this, however, with New York City (I was about to say "Fun City," but younger people wouldn't get the reference). Here, the opening of the Second Avenue Subway is now not expected before 2015, and the MTA is warning that it may have to scale back one of its major construction projects, which also include the Long Island Railroad's East Side Access project and the No. 7 train's extension to the Javits Center. Moreover, the MTA has now requested its second fare hike in two years.
If one is to take all this seriously, it appears that the MTA and its component railroads -- the New York City subway system, the Long Island Railroad and MetroNorth -- are the only systems that aren't booming in the U.S. and Canada. Even across the river, in New Jersey, the Hudson-Bergen light rail, or trolley, line gets extended a few stops every year.
From this, what can we conclude?
I guess we can conclude that the MTA is incredibly mismanaged, that its internal structure is seriously flawed, or that the money is going somewhere that it's not supposed to be going. Or maybe all three. I hope that Governor Patterson orders an independent audit of the MTA -- the sooner, the better!
Originally published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Reflections on 100 Clark St.
By Raanan Geberer
(Originally published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 3, 2008)
As this op-ed is being written, much is being made of the unfortunate case of 100 Clark St., a mid-19th-century townhouse with an “Addams Family”-style Mansard roof, which was much larger than a brownstone. The building was neglected for at least 30 years and had a host of building-code violations. It may have been a mansion at one time, but was subdivided into tiny apartments years ago.
Four years ago, part of its wall facing adjoining Monroe Place had to be replaced after bricks started falling out of the walls onto the street below. Now, last month, after nearby residents noticed part of the outer wall buckling more than a foot out of plumb, Department of Buildings engineers inspected the place and determined that the building, or at least the upper half of it, had to go.
At this time, demolition has temporarily ceased, and the future of the building is up in the air – will it be totally demolished or will it be rebuilt above the second (and now top) floor?
The case of 100 Clark St. is surely regrettable, and steps to keep the building in sound condition should have been taken long ago. Whoever is responsible for keeping it in that condition should be made to pay the cost.
But let’s look around. The building at 100 Clark is a cause celebre mainly because it falls within the Brooklyn Heights Historic District, where an active cadre of well-connected preservationists keep tabs on almost every building. There, even minor renovations can cause controversy.
The case also stands out because the vast majority of old row houses in the Heights, some of which pre-date 100 Clark St., are well cared for. In some cases, owners have spent as much as $100,000 or more for façade renovation and restoration of the original details.
However, in areas such as Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Sunset Park and East New York, there are 19th century buildings in terrible condition that are only sporadically repaired, or, in some cases, vacant. These buildings may also be in danger of falling down. Yet, who will take up their cause? I’m encouraged that there seem to be growing preservationist movements in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights, but what about all the years of neglect there?
As in much else, it all boils down to economics. An owner of an old row house in Sunset Park is often either a civil service worker, a retiree or the owner of a small bodega, has trouble paying some of his bills, and depends on two or three unreliable tenants for much of his income. He will likely only make repairs on an “as-needed” basis, and won’t spend much time about whether the steps and iron railing leading to the front door show the ravages of time.
Perhaps it’s time for our academic institutions, city agencies, architects, non-profits and grant-making businesses to show as much interest in preserving other areas of the borough as they do in preserving Brooklyn Heights, Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill, Fort Greene and Park Slope.
(Originally published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 3, 2008)
As this op-ed is being written, much is being made of the unfortunate case of 100 Clark St., a mid-19th-century townhouse with an “Addams Family”-style Mansard roof, which was much larger than a brownstone. The building was neglected for at least 30 years and had a host of building-code violations. It may have been a mansion at one time, but was subdivided into tiny apartments years ago.
Four years ago, part of its wall facing adjoining Monroe Place had to be replaced after bricks started falling out of the walls onto the street below. Now, last month, after nearby residents noticed part of the outer wall buckling more than a foot out of plumb, Department of Buildings engineers inspected the place and determined that the building, or at least the upper half of it, had to go.
At this time, demolition has temporarily ceased, and the future of the building is up in the air – will it be totally demolished or will it be rebuilt above the second (and now top) floor?
The case of 100 Clark St. is surely regrettable, and steps to keep the building in sound condition should have been taken long ago. Whoever is responsible for keeping it in that condition should be made to pay the cost.
But let’s look around. The building at 100 Clark is a cause celebre mainly because it falls within the Brooklyn Heights Historic District, where an active cadre of well-connected preservationists keep tabs on almost every building. There, even minor renovations can cause controversy.
The case also stands out because the vast majority of old row houses in the Heights, some of which pre-date 100 Clark St., are well cared for. In some cases, owners have spent as much as $100,000 or more for façade renovation and restoration of the original details.
However, in areas such as Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Sunset Park and East New York, there are 19th century buildings in terrible condition that are only sporadically repaired, or, in some cases, vacant. These buildings may also be in danger of falling down. Yet, who will take up their cause? I’m encouraged that there seem to be growing preservationist movements in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights, but what about all the years of neglect there?
As in much else, it all boils down to economics. An owner of an old row house in Sunset Park is often either a civil service worker, a retiree or the owner of a small bodega, has trouble paying some of his bills, and depends on two or three unreliable tenants for much of his income. He will likely only make repairs on an “as-needed” basis, and won’t spend much time about whether the steps and iron railing leading to the front door show the ravages of time.
Perhaps it’s time for our academic institutions, city agencies, architects, non-profits and grant-making businesses to show as much interest in preserving other areas of the borough as they do in preserving Brooklyn Heights, Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill, Fort Greene and Park Slope.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Whatever Happened to Student Power?
Whatever Happened to Student Power?
By Raanan Geberer
Reprinted from Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Most people, when they think of student demonstrations in the ’60s and ’70s, think of students demonstrating for civil rights, against the Vietnam War and the like.
This is correct — but only up to a point. Often, even at the same time as they were protesting for these weighty causes, they were often demonstrating on their own behalf. At times, student issues took center stage, such as during the (over the top, in my opinion) demonstration about the Columbia University Gym in 1968.
The Columbia University demonstration aside, student demands, at least at my high school, the Bronx High School of Science, took a more moderate form. Some of these demands seem positively innocuous, such as the right to go outside during lunch, the right to have soda machines in the school (alternative health types would consider this “politically incorrect” today) and, believe it or not, the end to the rule that girls couldn’t wear pants. One day, hundreds of girls came to school with paper bags, went into the bathroom and emerged wearing pants. That was the end of that rule!
Along with these were more serious issues — students’ seeking more electives, the right to distribute “underground” newspapers on campus, and more student control over the curriculum. At some point, a student-faculty-parent committee was formed, and although I was only dimly aware of what it did, it apparently did have some positive effect. (By the time I got to college, the protest era was largely over.)
Today, the idea of students’ rights has largely disappeared, at least in the high schools — the victim of more intense competition for college admissions, of the rising rate of crime within many schools and the resulting crackdown on it, and more rigid curriculum requirements dictated from Washington, Albany and the Department of Ed.
And in the final analysis, one might think, of what consequence is it anyway whether someone has the right to buy a can of soda in the school building or wear jeans?
Very little — but those who think only in such terms are missing the point. Participating in demonstrations, challenging the “powers that be” gave young people an incredible high! Jumping out of planes with a parachute, bungee jumping, backpacking in Thailand, taking mind-altering substances, driving 200 miles per hour in a racing car — forget it! No one who ever lived through those years and took part in these events will ever forget the thrill of collective action, of challenging our parents’, our teachers’ world — and winning!
All of their lives, we had been dictated to — and now, here we were, saying, yes, we might be 16, we might be 17, we might be 18, but when we say something, we deserve to be listened to! And today’s young people are all the poorer for not experiencing the same thing.
By Raanan Geberer
Reprinted from Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Most people, when they think of student demonstrations in the ’60s and ’70s, think of students demonstrating for civil rights, against the Vietnam War and the like.
This is correct — but only up to a point. Often, even at the same time as they were protesting for these weighty causes, they were often demonstrating on their own behalf. At times, student issues took center stage, such as during the (over the top, in my opinion) demonstration about the Columbia University Gym in 1968.
The Columbia University demonstration aside, student demands, at least at my high school, the Bronx High School of Science, took a more moderate form. Some of these demands seem positively innocuous, such as the right to go outside during lunch, the right to have soda machines in the school (alternative health types would consider this “politically incorrect” today) and, believe it or not, the end to the rule that girls couldn’t wear pants. One day, hundreds of girls came to school with paper bags, went into the bathroom and emerged wearing pants. That was the end of that rule!
Along with these were more serious issues — students’ seeking more electives, the right to distribute “underground” newspapers on campus, and more student control over the curriculum. At some point, a student-faculty-parent committee was formed, and although I was only dimly aware of what it did, it apparently did have some positive effect. (By the time I got to college, the protest era was largely over.)
Today, the idea of students’ rights has largely disappeared, at least in the high schools — the victim of more intense competition for college admissions, of the rising rate of crime within many schools and the resulting crackdown on it, and more rigid curriculum requirements dictated from Washington, Albany and the Department of Ed.
And in the final analysis, one might think, of what consequence is it anyway whether someone has the right to buy a can of soda in the school building or wear jeans?
Very little — but those who think only in such terms are missing the point. Participating in demonstrations, challenging the “powers that be” gave young people an incredible high! Jumping out of planes with a parachute, bungee jumping, backpacking in Thailand, taking mind-altering substances, driving 200 miles per hour in a racing car — forget it! No one who ever lived through those years and took part in these events will ever forget the thrill of collective action, of challenging our parents’, our teachers’ world — and winning!
All of their lives, we had been dictated to — and now, here we were, saying, yes, we might be 16, we might be 17, we might be 18, but when we say something, we deserve to be listened to! And today’s young people are all the poorer for not experiencing the same thing.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Needed: A Job Applicants' Bill of Rights
By Raanan Geberer
About 10 years ago, I had an interview with a well-known financial news organization as an editor. I won’t tell you its name, but I will tell you that its offices were here in Hudson County.
Anyway, I must have impressed them on the interview, because the woman in charge invited me back for a test. After the test, she said, "Well, there was one section you didn’t do so well on, but you did so well on all the other sections, we’ll overlook it." She scheduled a three-day try out a few weeks away, and I thought I was on my way.
The big day came. Because of my relative inexperience with the PATH train, I got confused by the directions and I got there late, but I did get there. I was prepared to apologize for being late – but I never go the chance. I was kept waiting for about a half hour. Finally, the person who interviewed me emerged.
"There’s been a staff crisis," she said, "and the people who were supposed to supervise you aren’t here. Why don’t you go home and we’ll call you." I smelled a rat, but was willing to give them a chance.
After I still didn’t hear from them in two weeks, I gave her a call. "Well," she said, "we’ve had a change of plans and have decided to look elsewhere." Stunned, I asked what the problem was. She just mentioned that one section on the test – the section that she earlier said she would be willing to overlook.
A few days later, I wrote a letter addressed to her, several executives in the company and their human resources office, telling my story and demanding an apology. And I got one, although it was written in rather vague, tepid language.
Recently, I wondered what would have happened had I engaged a labor lawyer and put the screws to them so that they would have to give me another tryout. I asked several attorneys and they were unanimous – nothing. In the U.S., one lawyer friend said, employment "at will" is the rule. This means that, other than in those instances where a particular company policy or union contract specifies otherwise, the employer has the right to hire and fire people at will. If this is the case for actual employees, he continued, it follows that job applicants also have few rights.
Just about the only time that an applicant can challenge a decision in the job-hunting process, this lawyer told me, is when that applicant suspects that he or she was excluded because of race, religion, age or disability. Another exception in which a "reasonable argument" can be made – and only in certain states – is if that applicant leaves a job upon the promise of another job, only to have the second employer cancel out at the last moment.
But these exceptions, as necessary as they are, leave out the majority of instances of lack of simple politeness or honesty on the part of employers. Already, according to an article I read online recently, fewer companies are even bothering to send out letters to candidates who didn’t get the job once they’ve made their choice. This can wreak havoc upon a person who has his heart set on a certain job, and only wants to apply for other jobs when he knows for certain whether this particular job was taken or not.
The whole job application process resembles a plantation, where one party holds all the cards and the other is forced to plead and grovel. That’s why I’m proposing a Job Applicants’ Bill of Rights in this country. Among its provisions might be:
A) If an employer says, "I’ll let you know in two weeks," he would have to give the applicant a progress report – within two weeks.
B) The employer, on request, would have to let the applicant know where he stands in the process – whether he’s one of two, one of three, or whatever. There would also be a deadline by which the employer would have to let the applicant know his status – possibly, within a month.
C) The employer would have to let the applicant know as soon as possible when someone else was hired.
D) If someone else has been chosen, but the employer says, "We’re impressed with your credentials, and we’ll keep your resume in case something else turns up," the employer would have to specify how long he will keep that applicant’s resume, and if an appropriate position turns up within that period of time, he would have to let the applicant know and ask whether he’s still interested.
E) If the employer promises the applicant a second interview, a test or a tryout, he would have to give that applicant a second interview, a test or a tryout, except in extenuating circumstances.
F) These provisions would not apply to an applicant who has never been contacted as a possible candidate – but once contact has been made, the wheels would be set in motion.
None of these provisions would require any more than a negligible expenditure on the part of any company, especially a large corporation. At most, they would require a little more bookkeeping, which would be easy given today’s computer programs.
I call on all municipal, state and federal elected officials! Come on! Who will be the first to introduce the Job Applicants’ Bill of Rights?
About 10 years ago, I had an interview with a well-known financial news organization as an editor. I won’t tell you its name, but I will tell you that its offices were here in Hudson County.
Anyway, I must have impressed them on the interview, because the woman in charge invited me back for a test. After the test, she said, "Well, there was one section you didn’t do so well on, but you did so well on all the other sections, we’ll overlook it." She scheduled a three-day try out a few weeks away, and I thought I was on my way.
The big day came. Because of my relative inexperience with the PATH train, I got confused by the directions and I got there late, but I did get there. I was prepared to apologize for being late – but I never go the chance. I was kept waiting for about a half hour. Finally, the person who interviewed me emerged.
"There’s been a staff crisis," she said, "and the people who were supposed to supervise you aren’t here. Why don’t you go home and we’ll call you." I smelled a rat, but was willing to give them a chance.
After I still didn’t hear from them in two weeks, I gave her a call. "Well," she said, "we’ve had a change of plans and have decided to look elsewhere." Stunned, I asked what the problem was. She just mentioned that one section on the test – the section that she earlier said she would be willing to overlook.
A few days later, I wrote a letter addressed to her, several executives in the company and their human resources office, telling my story and demanding an apology. And I got one, although it was written in rather vague, tepid language.
Recently, I wondered what would have happened had I engaged a labor lawyer and put the screws to them so that they would have to give me another tryout. I asked several attorneys and they were unanimous – nothing. In the U.S., one lawyer friend said, employment "at will" is the rule. This means that, other than in those instances where a particular company policy or union contract specifies otherwise, the employer has the right to hire and fire people at will. If this is the case for actual employees, he continued, it follows that job applicants also have few rights.
Just about the only time that an applicant can challenge a decision in the job-hunting process, this lawyer told me, is when that applicant suspects that he or she was excluded because of race, religion, age or disability. Another exception in which a "reasonable argument" can be made – and only in certain states – is if that applicant leaves a job upon the promise of another job, only to have the second employer cancel out at the last moment.
But these exceptions, as necessary as they are, leave out the majority of instances of lack of simple politeness or honesty on the part of employers. Already, according to an article I read online recently, fewer companies are even bothering to send out letters to candidates who didn’t get the job once they’ve made their choice. This can wreak havoc upon a person who has his heart set on a certain job, and only wants to apply for other jobs when he knows for certain whether this particular job was taken or not.
The whole job application process resembles a plantation, where one party holds all the cards and the other is forced to plead and grovel. That’s why I’m proposing a Job Applicants’ Bill of Rights in this country. Among its provisions might be:
A) If an employer says, "I’ll let you know in two weeks," he would have to give the applicant a progress report – within two weeks.
B) The employer, on request, would have to let the applicant know where he stands in the process – whether he’s one of two, one of three, or whatever. There would also be a deadline by which the employer would have to let the applicant know his status – possibly, within a month.
C) The employer would have to let the applicant know as soon as possible when someone else was hired.
D) If someone else has been chosen, but the employer says, "We’re impressed with your credentials, and we’ll keep your resume in case something else turns up," the employer would have to specify how long he will keep that applicant’s resume, and if an appropriate position turns up within that period of time, he would have to let the applicant know and ask whether he’s still interested.
E) If the employer promises the applicant a second interview, a test or a tryout, he would have to give that applicant a second interview, a test or a tryout, except in extenuating circumstances.
F) These provisions would not apply to an applicant who has never been contacted as a possible candidate – but once contact has been made, the wheels would be set in motion.
None of these provisions would require any more than a negligible expenditure on the part of any company, especially a large corporation. At most, they would require a little more bookkeeping, which would be easy given today’s computer programs.
I call on all municipal, state and federal elected officials! Come on! Who will be the first to introduce the Job Applicants’ Bill of Rights?
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Dad and His Diners
By Raanan Geberer
(first published in "Smith" online magazine)
Ever since my wife and I got married, my father, when he met us, would only eat at diners. And he would only order three things: a tuna fish sandwich, a mushroom omelette or a cheese omelette. He’d make a big show of going through the menu, then summon the waiter or waitress and declare: "Ummm, I think I’ll have a cheese omelette!"
Sooner or later we got tired of this, and we suggested other places. We first suggested an Italian restaurant a block away. Dad got upset. "I don’t like spaghetti!" he said. Then we suggested a Chinese restaurant nearby. This made him even more alarmed. "Seventy-five percent of what you get in a Chinese restaurant is pork!" he declared. Dad wasn’t strictly kosher, but eating pork and shrimp was where he drew the line, and he would never take a chance on eating something new that turned out to be pork. We reassured him that the Chinese restaurant had many chicken or vegetable dishes. We ordered for him – pan-fried noodles with vegetables – and surprisingly, he liked it. "This is very tasty," he beamed. But after that, he went back to his diner-only regime. Every time we saw him, he would repeat over and over, "I’ll go anywhere you want," but "anywhere" usually turned out to be either the Regal diner, the Moonstruck diner or the Chelsea Square diner.
This continued until the time took us out to one of the People’s Symphony Concerts, a series of low-cost chamber music concerts held at a high school on Irving Place on the East Side. My wife had recently been to Irving Place, and was excited about the prospect of going to one of the interesting-looking restaurants on that short but historic thoroughfare before the concert. There was a Northern Italian restaurant, there was a place with the evocative name "Friend of a Farmer," there was a European-style coffeehouse that served sandwiches, and there was the historic Pete’s Tavern, which had been there since 1864. At last, we would have something different! She was elated.
The big day came. We told my father that there were several restaurants we were interested in near the school. But before we had the chance to mention them by name, he smiled conspiratorially and said, "I knew a place. It’s right nearby. It’s a secret. Follow me!"
"It’s a secret?"
"Trust me!"
We kept walking, with my father saying "Trust me!" every few seconds and chuckling. Suddenly, he stopped. "Here it is!"
"Oh, no!"
In the middle of this street of exciting restaurants, my father had managed to find the one diner.
"It’s got everything!" he enthused. "You can get pancakes, omelettes, sandwiches, soup, hamburgers, you name it! OK?"
"Well, I guess so," my wife said in a low, disappointed voice.
"I knew you’d like it. See, I told you I’d go anywhere you want to go!"
Well, we suffered through the diner, which wasn’t bad as diners go, and went to see the concert. We finally got the chance to go to one of those Irving Place restaurants a few months later – on our own. And my wife must have gotten over it, because she was one of the last people to see my father alive when he was in the hospital and was glad about that.
Now, when go out to eat, we go to a Chinese restaurant, a Thai restaurant, a burrito place, a pizza place – or a diner. And when we go to the diner, it’s because we want to go, on our own terms.
We tell this story a lot, with a slight laugh. And we hope that wherever Dad is, there are old-fashioned New York diners with tuna fish sandwiches, mushroom omelettes and cheese omelettes.
(first published in "Smith" online magazine)
Ever since my wife and I got married, my father, when he met us, would only eat at diners. And he would only order three things: a tuna fish sandwich, a mushroom omelette or a cheese omelette. He’d make a big show of going through the menu, then summon the waiter or waitress and declare: "Ummm, I think I’ll have a cheese omelette!"
Sooner or later we got tired of this, and we suggested other places. We first suggested an Italian restaurant a block away. Dad got upset. "I don’t like spaghetti!" he said. Then we suggested a Chinese restaurant nearby. This made him even more alarmed. "Seventy-five percent of what you get in a Chinese restaurant is pork!" he declared. Dad wasn’t strictly kosher, but eating pork and shrimp was where he drew the line, and he would never take a chance on eating something new that turned out to be pork. We reassured him that the Chinese restaurant had many chicken or vegetable dishes. We ordered for him – pan-fried noodles with vegetables – and surprisingly, he liked it. "This is very tasty," he beamed. But after that, he went back to his diner-only regime. Every time we saw him, he would repeat over and over, "I’ll go anywhere you want," but "anywhere" usually turned out to be either the Regal diner, the Moonstruck diner or the Chelsea Square diner.
This continued until the time took us out to one of the People’s Symphony Concerts, a series of low-cost chamber music concerts held at a high school on Irving Place on the East Side. My wife had recently been to Irving Place, and was excited about the prospect of going to one of the interesting-looking restaurants on that short but historic thoroughfare before the concert. There was a Northern Italian restaurant, there was a place with the evocative name "Friend of a Farmer," there was a European-style coffeehouse that served sandwiches, and there was the historic Pete’s Tavern, which had been there since 1864. At last, we would have something different! She was elated.
The big day came. We told my father that there were several restaurants we were interested in near the school. But before we had the chance to mention them by name, he smiled conspiratorially and said, "I knew a place. It’s right nearby. It’s a secret. Follow me!"
"It’s a secret?"
"Trust me!"
We kept walking, with my father saying "Trust me!" every few seconds and chuckling. Suddenly, he stopped. "Here it is!"
"Oh, no!"
In the middle of this street of exciting restaurants, my father had managed to find the one diner.
"It’s got everything!" he enthused. "You can get pancakes, omelettes, sandwiches, soup, hamburgers, you name it! OK?"
"Well, I guess so," my wife said in a low, disappointed voice.
"I knew you’d like it. See, I told you I’d go anywhere you want to go!"
Well, we suffered through the diner, which wasn’t bad as diners go, and went to see the concert. We finally got the chance to go to one of those Irving Place restaurants a few months later – on our own. And my wife must have gotten over it, because she was one of the last people to see my father alive when he was in the hospital and was glad about that.
Now, when go out to eat, we go to a Chinese restaurant, a Thai restaurant, a burrito place, a pizza place – or a diner. And when we go to the diner, it’s because we want to go, on our own terms.
We tell this story a lot, with a slight laugh. And we hope that wherever Dad is, there are old-fashioned New York diners with tuna fish sandwiches, mushroom omelettes and cheese omelettes.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
I Had Asthma Before It Was Popular
By Raanan Geberer
Originally appeared in "Currents" section of Hudson Reporter, Hoboken, N.J.
The rate of childhood asthma has risen steadily in the last 20 years. Some people link this to air pollution: others blame global warming.
This should give me some perverse satisfaction, although it really doesn't. I was born with hereditary asthma, and have had it most of my life.
My childhood was filled with syrupy, icky-tasting liquids that my father called "the green," "the yellow" and "the red," eventually replaced by pills. I spent many evenings during my pre-teen years hunched over the vaporizer, breathing in the steam as my mother stood over me. As for allergy injections, don't even ask! I still remember my smiling, elderly allergist pricking my arm with the needle, then joking, "Ouch! That hurts!" as I smarted in pain.
Nowadays, there are special sleep-away camps for kids with asthma. But when I was young, there either weren't any such camps or my parents didn't know about them, so I had to watch jealously as most of my classmates went away to camp. When I was 15, thinking I could do an end-run around my parents, I applied for a job as a waiter in a camp. But when I let the word "asthma" slip, the interviewer said, "We've had to send several staff members home because of asthmatic conditions." Foiled again!
As for sports, forget it! My mother insisted that every time i registered for gym class, I give the teacher a note saying that I could withdraw from physical activity when my asthma acted up. One day in junior high, I told her I was invited to play touch football. She interrogated me until she found out where the game was. She then told me that if I went there, she would stand there to make sure I didn't play.
A few years later, when I told Mom I was applying for a summer kibbutz program in Israel, she angrily made me list every single medicine I had ever taken, as if I were a former felon trying to hide a prison record. Needless to say, I wasn't accepted, although I did get to go on an archaeological dig there many years later.
My asthma began to fade away in my late teens, and I was finally able to persuade my parents to let me go to an out-of-town college -- the college had an infirmary where I could take my injections.
The illness basically disappeared by my early twenties, although I continued to take medicines as needed. I began to do activities that I wouldn't have thought of doing as a child, such as jogging, going on long bike trips, playing paddleball, canoeing and even taking martial arts classes (I now think of this period as a "golden age.")
Then, when I was around 30, I caught a bad strain of the flu. After it went, my asthma came back--in spades. I went to the emergency room many times. I often gasped for air just to walk one block to the pharmacy. At the time, I worked as a copy editor for the now-defunct Hudson Dispatch in New Jersey, and many nights when I left the newsroom, I had so little breath that the trip down the block was like climbing Mount Everest.
After a few months of this, I went to an allergist. She gave me new medicines and weekly injections. When that didn't work, she increased the injections to twice a week. Still, I kept going to the ER, and was admitted to the hospital several times. I tried acupuncture, but that didn't help either.
On top of it all, there was the girlfriend who, after I found it hard to talk one night because I was so short of breath, accused me of having "withdrawn Piscean moods" and ended our relationship.
During this period, I changed jobs twice. When I took a position in Brooklyn, I decided to find a doctor nearby. My new doctor gave me some sort of a test, then discontinued the injections while continuing the medications. I began to get better almost immediately. The visits to the ER became more infrequent, then stopped.
Eventually, I began taking newer medications and began paying attention to my diet. With one or two exceptions, I've been asthma attack-free for about 12 years.
So, to all these new childhood asthma patients that you hear about, good luck. You'll certainly enjoy better care than I did!
Originally appeared in "Currents" section of Hudson Reporter, Hoboken, N.J.
The rate of childhood asthma has risen steadily in the last 20 years. Some people link this to air pollution: others blame global warming.
This should give me some perverse satisfaction, although it really doesn't. I was born with hereditary asthma, and have had it most of my life.
My childhood was filled with syrupy, icky-tasting liquids that my father called "the green," "the yellow" and "the red," eventually replaced by pills. I spent many evenings during my pre-teen years hunched over the vaporizer, breathing in the steam as my mother stood over me. As for allergy injections, don't even ask! I still remember my smiling, elderly allergist pricking my arm with the needle, then joking, "Ouch! That hurts!" as I smarted in pain.
Nowadays, there are special sleep-away camps for kids with asthma. But when I was young, there either weren't any such camps or my parents didn't know about them, so I had to watch jealously as most of my classmates went away to camp. When I was 15, thinking I could do an end-run around my parents, I applied for a job as a waiter in a camp. But when I let the word "asthma" slip, the interviewer said, "We've had to send several staff members home because of asthmatic conditions." Foiled again!
As for sports, forget it! My mother insisted that every time i registered for gym class, I give the teacher a note saying that I could withdraw from physical activity when my asthma acted up. One day in junior high, I told her I was invited to play touch football. She interrogated me until she found out where the game was. She then told me that if I went there, she would stand there to make sure I didn't play.
A few years later, when I told Mom I was applying for a summer kibbutz program in Israel, she angrily made me list every single medicine I had ever taken, as if I were a former felon trying to hide a prison record. Needless to say, I wasn't accepted, although I did get to go on an archaeological dig there many years later.
My asthma began to fade away in my late teens, and I was finally able to persuade my parents to let me go to an out-of-town college -- the college had an infirmary where I could take my injections.
The illness basically disappeared by my early twenties, although I continued to take medicines as needed. I began to do activities that I wouldn't have thought of doing as a child, such as jogging, going on long bike trips, playing paddleball, canoeing and even taking martial arts classes (I now think of this period as a "golden age.")
Then, when I was around 30, I caught a bad strain of the flu. After it went, my asthma came back--in spades. I went to the emergency room many times. I often gasped for air just to walk one block to the pharmacy. At the time, I worked as a copy editor for the now-defunct Hudson Dispatch in New Jersey, and many nights when I left the newsroom, I had so little breath that the trip down the block was like climbing Mount Everest.
After a few months of this, I went to an allergist. She gave me new medicines and weekly injections. When that didn't work, she increased the injections to twice a week. Still, I kept going to the ER, and was admitted to the hospital several times. I tried acupuncture, but that didn't help either.
On top of it all, there was the girlfriend who, after I found it hard to talk one night because I was so short of breath, accused me of having "withdrawn Piscean moods" and ended our relationship.
During this period, I changed jobs twice. When I took a position in Brooklyn, I decided to find a doctor nearby. My new doctor gave me some sort of a test, then discontinued the injections while continuing the medications. I began to get better almost immediately. The visits to the ER became more infrequent, then stopped.
Eventually, I began taking newer medications and began paying attention to my diet. With one or two exceptions, I've been asthma attack-free for about 12 years.
So, to all these new childhood asthma patients that you hear about, good luck. You'll certainly enjoy better care than I did!
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Why Commercial Rent Regulation Is Needed
By Raanan Geberer
Originally from Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 2006
The recent news of the closure of the Musicians General Store, the musical-instrument store in Cobble Hill, is saddening–but hardly unique.
In another example, in Manhattan, an entire block of stores on Eighth Avenue north of 14th Street, including the Cajun jazz club, one of the few places to hear 1920s-style jazz in the city, was forced to close down. Don’t forget, also, what happened to the Bottom Line and CBGB’s. And the same thing is happening to many small neighborhood restaurants.
What’s going on here?
Nine times out of ten, the owners of these buildings are kicking out these stores in hopes that a chain store will move in. Many large retail chains, it seems, have no limit on what they are going to spend. For example, where I live, you have a Duane-Reed, a CVS and a Rite-Aid within three blocks of each other. The market clearly isn’t big enough for all three, but there they are. And there is a second Duane-Reed coming five blocks away!
I have nothing against chain stores. For years, chain stores such as the A&P and Woolworth’s co-existed with small "mom-and-pop" stores. In many underdeveloped areas, chain stores have played an important, valuable role in bringing these neighborhoods back to life–for example, look at the Lowe’s in Gowanus.
But in general, however, building owners have let themselves be carried away with dreams of easy money and quick fortunes, not just a reasonable profit. Forest City Ratner, in its Atlantic Terminal and Atlantic Center malls, has allocated space only to chain stores, without any set-aside for local merchants.
Under these circumstances, the idea the "owning your own business" is the ultimate dream for people has turned out to be a cruel joke.
Quite a few years ago, a former City Council member, Stan Michaels, who represented Washington Heights, sponsored a measure to introduce commercial rent regulation in this city. Needless to say, it failed. When I asked his assistant about it a year or so later, I was told that there was no support for it, and that efforts were being concentrated on lowering taxes for commercial buildings so that the owners wouldn’t have to charge such high rents.
Whoever made the last argument doesn’t understand human nature. While there are doubtless some ethical businesspeople, there are as many, or more, who are not. As the influence of traditional ethics, religious faith and civic responsibility wanes, it is increasingly replaced by an attitude of "I’m going to get as much for myself as I can, and to hell with everybody else." That’s why the government must step in as an arbiter among diverse groups (in this case, store-owners and commercial building owners) who would destroy each other otherwise.
This is why the idea of commercial rent regulation should be revived.
Originally from Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 2006
The recent news of the closure of the Musicians General Store, the musical-instrument store in Cobble Hill, is saddening–but hardly unique.
In another example, in Manhattan, an entire block of stores on Eighth Avenue north of 14th Street, including the Cajun jazz club, one of the few places to hear 1920s-style jazz in the city, was forced to close down. Don’t forget, also, what happened to the Bottom Line and CBGB’s. And the same thing is happening to many small neighborhood restaurants.
What’s going on here?
Nine times out of ten, the owners of these buildings are kicking out these stores in hopes that a chain store will move in. Many large retail chains, it seems, have no limit on what they are going to spend. For example, where I live, you have a Duane-Reed, a CVS and a Rite-Aid within three blocks of each other. The market clearly isn’t big enough for all three, but there they are. And there is a second Duane-Reed coming five blocks away!
I have nothing against chain stores. For years, chain stores such as the A&P and Woolworth’s co-existed with small "mom-and-pop" stores. In many underdeveloped areas, chain stores have played an important, valuable role in bringing these neighborhoods back to life–for example, look at the Lowe’s in Gowanus.
But in general, however, building owners have let themselves be carried away with dreams of easy money and quick fortunes, not just a reasonable profit. Forest City Ratner, in its Atlantic Terminal and Atlantic Center malls, has allocated space only to chain stores, without any set-aside for local merchants.
Under these circumstances, the idea the "owning your own business" is the ultimate dream for people has turned out to be a cruel joke.
Quite a few years ago, a former City Council member, Stan Michaels, who represented Washington Heights, sponsored a measure to introduce commercial rent regulation in this city. Needless to say, it failed. When I asked his assistant about it a year or so later, I was told that there was no support for it, and that efforts were being concentrated on lowering taxes for commercial buildings so that the owners wouldn’t have to charge such high rents.
Whoever made the last argument doesn’t understand human nature. While there are doubtless some ethical businesspeople, there are as many, or more, who are not. As the influence of traditional ethics, religious faith and civic responsibility wanes, it is increasingly replaced by an attitude of "I’m going to get as much for myself as I can, and to hell with everybody else." That’s why the government must step in as an arbiter among diverse groups (in this case, store-owners and commercial building owners) who would destroy each other otherwise.
This is why the idea of commercial rent regulation should be revived.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Doin' the Census in the Bronx
By Raanan Geberer
Published with the permission of SofTech, publisher of BronxBoard, where it originally appeared in the "Bronx Diary" section
A t the age of twenty-one, I graduated from the State University of New York at Binghamton. I was still unsure about what I wanted to do with my life. I was trying to make up my mind between journalism (which I eventually chose), city planning and high-school teaching. So, like many of my peers during the laid-back 1970s, I decided to "take a year off," basically living at home in Co-op City, working at an "ordinary" job and maybe doing a little traveling before finally making a decision and going to graduate school for my master's.
The problem was, even getting an ordinary job, without any real job skills, was tough. For whatever reason, I didn't want to go back to either of my previous short-term employers, R&J Records, a record wholesaler on Sherman Avenue in Inwood, or the Record Hunter, the famed record store on Fifth Avenue. I tried driving a yellow cab out of a garage on Jerome Avenue near Yankee Stadium, but I found it so stressful that I soon quit. For a while, I worked part-time doing title searches in the Bronx County Courthouse for a real-estate company, but that came to an end after two months. Then, my friend Angelo told me that the Census was hiring, and told me how to apply.
Few people knew, and probably still don't, that the census doesn't only come to life every ten years. During the "off years" it does surveys for every federal agency under the sun. The survey I would be doing was for the Justice Department and called the National Crime Survey. Families were chosen at random to be interviewed for the purpose of seeing whether the rates of specific crimes were going up or down.
I applied, was accepted, and was told I would work on a team in the Northeast Bronx, near where I lived. But first, I had a to attend a one-week training session in Lower Manhattan. Our tours with the Census Bureau would be only six weeks, but, we were assured, the bureau did one survey after another and was always hiring. "If you're good," one head honcho addressed us, "You can become a crew chief!" Definitely something to consider.
After the training session, I was assigned to a team that would operate around the Allerton Avenue area - the same area where Angelo and several of my high school friends used to live. I was overjoyed, and although I had never lived there myself, I knew those streets inside-out, so the job would be easy. The first day, our whole group, about twenty of us, met at the diner on the north side of Pelham Parkway and White Plains Road for a little orientation with our new crew chief, Nick, a young, well-dressed Greek-American guy who'd previously worked as a painting contractor.
We got our list of interviewees and our interview questions, and it was off to the races. I was a little annoyed that the policy of this survey was to not notify people in advance that we were coming, but on the whole, people were cooperative, especially after I displayed a big badge that identified me as a federal employee. The only exception was one woman on Gun Hill Road who slammed the door on me for reasons unknown. A few people politely refused to answer the questions, like three young Fordham University coeds who shared an apartment on Cruger Avenue, but those I could tolerate.
A lot of the bureau's rules were a pain. For example, if only one member of the family was home, you had to put the answer down as a "partial," and then come back the next day, or the day afterward, to speak to the wife or husband. After a while, I learned to just ask, "Does your wife feel the same way you do?"
Also, the question "During the last year, were you ever robbed, raped, assaulted, physically attacked..." could be inflammatory, so eventually I just asked, "in the last year, have any crimes been committed against you?" and let them do the talking.
The job did have its pleasant features. Often, I took a break to sit down at Al's Luncheonette on Allerton, listening to the war stories of the colorful Russian immigrant owner, or I sifted through the old records and books at Lianna's antique store, further to the east.
One time, I interviewed an elderly, very well-spoken doctor on Williamsbridge Road who talked about the neighborhood and how stable it was. "Of course, there was one building on the street that had, shall we say, that bad element, but of course, that building just burned down." He winked his eye, implying that he had something to do with it.
Another time, I was so taken with a young lady I interviewed on Holland Avenue that the day after I interviewed her for the Census, I called her and asked her for a date. She was the daughter of a State Senator, no less, whose office was on Pelham Parkway North, right next to the diner. Completely unprofessional behavior, perhaps, but at twenty-one, pursuit of the opposite sex overrode everything and anything. She wasn't interested.
Once a week, we all got together at the diner, handed Nick our paperwork, then got a new list of people to interview. Nick tried to start a contest among us by announcing who had the most completed interviews for the week, something I didn't appreciate. I usually came in second or third, but one very jovial and outgoing man - Mr. Del Giudice - always came in with the highest totals. Del Giudice, who was born in the old country, spoke Italian, and since at least half of the Allerton Avenue area was still Italian-American, he apparently was a hit.
"It's those stories he tells," Nick related to us, cheerfully.
After the sixth week, we met in the diner one last time. Nick congratulated us and then said, "You might not have noticed that Mr. Del Giudice isn’t here." He was right, although I hadn't noticed it until he mentioned it.
Well, it seemed that Nick's opinions of him had cooled a little bit. "His totals were a little too high, so we decided to re-interview some of the people he said he interviewed. He made all his interviews up, and we're prosecuting him. Oh, by the way, Ron?"
"Yes?"
"We checked up on a few of yours, too, but you're OK!" I breathed a sigh of relief. Apparently Nick didn't know - or care - about my "partials."
"What about more surveys? How do we apply?"
Nick breathed heavily. “They just announced that they're cutting back on the number of surveys they're doing. I don't know when the next one is. I’m gonna go back to contracting for a while. I wish you guys the best."
A week or two later, I took a trip over to the trusty Lehman College job board (supposedly for Lehman students only, but no one was checking). Soon, I was working as a "permit clerk" for a plumbing company on Webster Avenue. I had to go down to the Buildings Department every day and try to get permits for the jobs they were doing. That job, too, was a quite a trip, as they said in the '70s, but that's a story for another day.
Published with the permission of SofTech, publisher of BronxBoard, where it originally appeared in the "Bronx Diary" section
A t the age of twenty-one, I graduated from the State University of New York at Binghamton. I was still unsure about what I wanted to do with my life. I was trying to make up my mind between journalism (which I eventually chose), city planning and high-school teaching. So, like many of my peers during the laid-back 1970s, I decided to "take a year off," basically living at home in Co-op City, working at an "ordinary" job and maybe doing a little traveling before finally making a decision and going to graduate school for my master's.
The problem was, even getting an ordinary job, without any real job skills, was tough. For whatever reason, I didn't want to go back to either of my previous short-term employers, R&J Records, a record wholesaler on Sherman Avenue in Inwood, or the Record Hunter, the famed record store on Fifth Avenue. I tried driving a yellow cab out of a garage on Jerome Avenue near Yankee Stadium, but I found it so stressful that I soon quit. For a while, I worked part-time doing title searches in the Bronx County Courthouse for a real-estate company, but that came to an end after two months. Then, my friend Angelo told me that the Census was hiring, and told me how to apply.
Few people knew, and probably still don't, that the census doesn't only come to life every ten years. During the "off years" it does surveys for every federal agency under the sun. The survey I would be doing was for the Justice Department and called the National Crime Survey. Families were chosen at random to be interviewed for the purpose of seeing whether the rates of specific crimes were going up or down.
I applied, was accepted, and was told I would work on a team in the Northeast Bronx, near where I lived. But first, I had a to attend a one-week training session in Lower Manhattan. Our tours with the Census Bureau would be only six weeks, but, we were assured, the bureau did one survey after another and was always hiring. "If you're good," one head honcho addressed us, "You can become a crew chief!" Definitely something to consider.
After the training session, I was assigned to a team that would operate around the Allerton Avenue area - the same area where Angelo and several of my high school friends used to live. I was overjoyed, and although I had never lived there myself, I knew those streets inside-out, so the job would be easy. The first day, our whole group, about twenty of us, met at the diner on the north side of Pelham Parkway and White Plains Road for a little orientation with our new crew chief, Nick, a young, well-dressed Greek-American guy who'd previously worked as a painting contractor.
We got our list of interviewees and our interview questions, and it was off to the races. I was a little annoyed that the policy of this survey was to not notify people in advance that we were coming, but on the whole, people were cooperative, especially after I displayed a big badge that identified me as a federal employee. The only exception was one woman on Gun Hill Road who slammed the door on me for reasons unknown. A few people politely refused to answer the questions, like three young Fordham University coeds who shared an apartment on Cruger Avenue, but those I could tolerate.
A lot of the bureau's rules were a pain. For example, if only one member of the family was home, you had to put the answer down as a "partial," and then come back the next day, or the day afterward, to speak to the wife or husband. After a while, I learned to just ask, "Does your wife feel the same way you do?"
Also, the question "During the last year, were you ever robbed, raped, assaulted, physically attacked..." could be inflammatory, so eventually I just asked, "in the last year, have any crimes been committed against you?" and let them do the talking.
The job did have its pleasant features. Often, I took a break to sit down at Al's Luncheonette on Allerton, listening to the war stories of the colorful Russian immigrant owner, or I sifted through the old records and books at Lianna's antique store, further to the east.
One time, I interviewed an elderly, very well-spoken doctor on Williamsbridge Road who talked about the neighborhood and how stable it was. "Of course, there was one building on the street that had, shall we say, that bad element, but of course, that building just burned down." He winked his eye, implying that he had something to do with it.
Another time, I was so taken with a young lady I interviewed on Holland Avenue that the day after I interviewed her for the Census, I called her and asked her for a date. She was the daughter of a State Senator, no less, whose office was on Pelham Parkway North, right next to the diner. Completely unprofessional behavior, perhaps, but at twenty-one, pursuit of the opposite sex overrode everything and anything. She wasn't interested.
Once a week, we all got together at the diner, handed Nick our paperwork, then got a new list of people to interview. Nick tried to start a contest among us by announcing who had the most completed interviews for the week, something I didn't appreciate. I usually came in second or third, but one very jovial and outgoing man - Mr. Del Giudice - always came in with the highest totals. Del Giudice, who was born in the old country, spoke Italian, and since at least half of the Allerton Avenue area was still Italian-American, he apparently was a hit.
"It's those stories he tells," Nick related to us, cheerfully.
After the sixth week, we met in the diner one last time. Nick congratulated us and then said, "You might not have noticed that Mr. Del Giudice isn’t here." He was right, although I hadn't noticed it until he mentioned it.
Well, it seemed that Nick's opinions of him had cooled a little bit. "His totals were a little too high, so we decided to re-interview some of the people he said he interviewed. He made all his interviews up, and we're prosecuting him. Oh, by the way, Ron?"
"Yes?"
"We checked up on a few of yours, too, but you're OK!" I breathed a sigh of relief. Apparently Nick didn't know - or care - about my "partials."
"What about more surveys? How do we apply?"
Nick breathed heavily. “They just announced that they're cutting back on the number of surveys they're doing. I don't know when the next one is. I’m gonna go back to contracting for a while. I wish you guys the best."
A week or two later, I took a trip over to the trusty Lehman College job board (supposedly for Lehman students only, but no one was checking). Soon, I was working as a "permit clerk" for a plumbing company on Webster Avenue. I had to go down to the Buildings Department every day and try to get permits for the jobs they were doing. That job, too, was a quite a trip, as they said in the '70s, but that's a story for another day.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Googling the Dead
By Raanan Geberer
Originally Published in "Smith" Magazine
Like most computer-literate Americans, I find that one of my main activities on the web is looking up (or “Googling”) people I used to know. But when, a few years ago, I Googled one of my old girlfriends, Karen Dollinger, and found an obituary, I was devastated, even though we had never been “in love” per se.
Karen and I met through an ad I placed in the Village Voice back in the late '80s. Karen was a psychiatrist, very impressive to me, and I really got a kick out of the fact that she would consider me, who had a history of childhood emotional problems, suitable material to go out with. She was very heavy, about 250 pounds, and for that reason, men had avoided her for most of her life. But since I’m really attracted to large women, her body was an incredible turn-on. I couldn’t get enough of her, with her gigantic legs, ass and breasts, and sometimes we’d have sex several times in a day.
I would play little verbal games with her:“Karen, could you look at the clock and tell me what time it is?”“Eleven o’clock. Why?”“What do you think we’ll be saying to each other at midnight?”“Oh, please fuck me!”“And what do you think we’ll be saying at one o’clock?”“Oh, PLEASE, fuck me!”
Karen and I had a strange relationship — we spent weekends together, but during the week, it seemed like we hardly knew each other. We had gone to the same state university, but outside of music and films, we didn’t really share each other’s interests. She was really into horses, having ridden from childhood, and owned at least one, which she kept at a friend’s farm upstate (I always suspected she was trying to hide the fact that she came from a fairly wealthy background; for example, she had owned a BMW in college, but claimed she’d gotten the money from an accident settlement).
She shared none of my consuming interest in politics — she never watched the evening news or read the newspaper, and once asked me, “Who’s Al Sharpton?” Although we were both Jewish, it also shocked me that she was so non-religious, she treated even Yom Kippur like it was just another day (she described her family, who I never met, as being “extremely white-bread”). Although I’m far from being Orthodox, I have strong religious and spiritual beliefs, and her total indifference threw me for a loop (at least if she’d told me she was a militant atheist, at least that would have been SOMETHING!)
Still, I respected her intelligence, and I liked her lack of pretense and the fact that we had really intense conversations. I might have turned her off a few times by yelling enthusiastically, in bed, about her “big ass” — to me saying this was merely an intensely sexual turn-on, but to her it was probably a reminder of the insults she’d gotten throughout her life.
Then, there was the matter of my asthma, which was pretty serious back then and which made me cough and wheeze constantly. She thought it was psychosomatic and advised me to return to therapy. She would have been better off telling me to go to a good pulmonary specialist, like the one who finally helped me a few years later.
The relationship lasted about nine months — we both sort of understood, from the very beginning, that it was basically temporary, and that at some point we’d move on to other partners. Still, I assumed that we’d always be friends, and I was shocked when she decided to cut off all contact with me (my leftist friend Bert later said this was proof of how “conventional” she was, since, “middle class-type women, unlike artistic and intellectual types, rarely have stay in touch with their ex-boyfriends”). About a year later, another friend, Dan Dinnerstein, answered a personal ad that she herself had placed, and I was relieved when she dropped him after two dates.
The obit said that she lived up in Putnam County and was married with two children. It didn’t give the cause of death — I wondered whether she had killed herself, since she always used to talk about how depressed she was. She might also have died of a heart attack. She herself had predicted this, since her mother had also died of one in her forties.
At any rate, here’s a shout out to Karen, I wasn’t in love with you, I'm still not in love with you, but I DO feel love for you.
And I hope we’ll meet n the next world.
Originally Published in "Smith" Magazine
Like most computer-literate Americans, I find that one of my main activities on the web is looking up (or “Googling”) people I used to know. But when, a few years ago, I Googled one of my old girlfriends, Karen Dollinger, and found an obituary, I was devastated, even though we had never been “in love” per se.
Karen and I met through an ad I placed in the Village Voice back in the late '80s. Karen was a psychiatrist, very impressive to me, and I really got a kick out of the fact that she would consider me, who had a history of childhood emotional problems, suitable material to go out with. She was very heavy, about 250 pounds, and for that reason, men had avoided her for most of her life. But since I’m really attracted to large women, her body was an incredible turn-on. I couldn’t get enough of her, with her gigantic legs, ass and breasts, and sometimes we’d have sex several times in a day.
I would play little verbal games with her:“Karen, could you look at the clock and tell me what time it is?”“Eleven o’clock. Why?”“What do you think we’ll be saying to each other at midnight?”“Oh, please fuck me!”“And what do you think we’ll be saying at one o’clock?”“Oh, PLEASE, fuck me!”
Karen and I had a strange relationship — we spent weekends together, but during the week, it seemed like we hardly knew each other. We had gone to the same state university, but outside of music and films, we didn’t really share each other’s interests. She was really into horses, having ridden from childhood, and owned at least one, which she kept at a friend’s farm upstate (I always suspected she was trying to hide the fact that she came from a fairly wealthy background; for example, she had owned a BMW in college, but claimed she’d gotten the money from an accident settlement).
She shared none of my consuming interest in politics — she never watched the evening news or read the newspaper, and once asked me, “Who’s Al Sharpton?” Although we were both Jewish, it also shocked me that she was so non-religious, she treated even Yom Kippur like it was just another day (she described her family, who I never met, as being “extremely white-bread”). Although I’m far from being Orthodox, I have strong religious and spiritual beliefs, and her total indifference threw me for a loop (at least if she’d told me she was a militant atheist, at least that would have been SOMETHING!)
Still, I respected her intelligence, and I liked her lack of pretense and the fact that we had really intense conversations. I might have turned her off a few times by yelling enthusiastically, in bed, about her “big ass” — to me saying this was merely an intensely sexual turn-on, but to her it was probably a reminder of the insults she’d gotten throughout her life.
Then, there was the matter of my asthma, which was pretty serious back then and which made me cough and wheeze constantly. She thought it was psychosomatic and advised me to return to therapy. She would have been better off telling me to go to a good pulmonary specialist, like the one who finally helped me a few years later.
The relationship lasted about nine months — we both sort of understood, from the very beginning, that it was basically temporary, and that at some point we’d move on to other partners. Still, I assumed that we’d always be friends, and I was shocked when she decided to cut off all contact with me (my leftist friend Bert later said this was proof of how “conventional” she was, since, “middle class-type women, unlike artistic and intellectual types, rarely have stay in touch with their ex-boyfriends”). About a year later, another friend, Dan Dinnerstein, answered a personal ad that she herself had placed, and I was relieved when she dropped him after two dates.
The obit said that she lived up in Putnam County and was married with two children. It didn’t give the cause of death — I wondered whether she had killed herself, since she always used to talk about how depressed she was. She might also have died of a heart attack. She herself had predicted this, since her mother had also died of one in her forties.
At any rate, here’s a shout out to Karen, I wasn’t in love with you, I'm still not in love with you, but I DO feel love for you.
And I hope we’ll meet n the next world.
Why the Brits Hate Israel
By Raanan Geberer
As we speak, British commentators (Alexander Cockburn, Tony Judt, Christopher Hitchens) are all agog in a frenzy, not only criticizing Israel, which is their right, but presenting its mere existence, and that of the Zionist movement, as a former of injustice, with a vituperation more worthy of a pro wrestling villain than of serious students of world affairs.
Also, British academics have been in the forefront of the movement to boycott cooperation with Israeli universities – a move that is somewhat odd, since Israeli academics have been among the most strident critics of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. When an Israeli professor visiting Britain told one of the Brits that the Israeli-Arab conflict (or, if you will, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) was not one-sided, the British professor said, “Yes, it’s very one-sided.” Apparently that gentleman has never heard of suicide bombers. And apparently most of these critics have never heard of the substantial human rights violations found in Syria, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries—it’s only Israeli human rights violations that concern them.
To understand WHY the so many of the British hate Israel, we must go back into history. Specifically, we must go back to a part of history that’s basically been forgotten and many younger people are not even aware of – the British mandate over Palestine.
To put it briefly, after the British Army took Palestine from the Turks during World War I, the then-new League of Nations awarded Britain a “mandate” to govern Palestine. At the time, there were already severe tensions between two opposing nationalist movements – the Zionist movement and the Palestinian Arab nationalist movement. Britain had made conflicting pledges to both sides during World War I.
What the British should have done, and could have done, is to act as an honest broker, to try to reconcile the differences between the two groups and to help them come to an agreement. After all, there was lots of empty land in Palestine—and still is. But instead, Britain decided to play its little “divide and conquer” game, pitting groups against each other so as to strengthen its own hold on the country. This had worked in Ireland (well, up to a point) and in India—now it was Palestine’s turn.
First, British High Commissioner Herbert Samuel (ironically, a Jew) appointed extremist Amin al-Husseini as “grand mufti” of Jerusalem, when he could easily have appointed a more moderate candidate. Then, in 1929, after armed Arab gangs slaughtered scores of innocent Jews in Hebron and Safed, Britain didn’t vigorously hunt down those who incited the riots and bring them to justice. Instead, it decided that the whole thing had been provoked by Jewish immigration, and tried to limit it.
Even after World War II, when thousands of Jewish concentration camp survivors in the DP camps of Europe were clamoring to go to Palestine (and it is true, many did want to go to the U.S. instead), Britain refused to compromise. It wouldn’t even admit the 100,000 immigrants that the international community wanted. Instead, it basically imposed martial law on the country, setting up roadblocks, jailing people at random, and so on.
Unfortunately for the British, the Jews didn’t roll over like the ghetto Jews of medieval Europe. They organized, they demonstrated, they went on strike, and sometimes they committed acts of violence, the best known of which was the bombing of the King David Hotel. For several years, the country was in the midst of a virtual civil war between the British and the Jewish community. The Arabs were basically bystanders, and the Zionist movement, unfortunately, took the short-sighted and unrealistic position that Arab opposition to Zionism was artificially created by British imperialism.
At any rate, to put it crudely, we, the Jewish people, kicked Britain’s collective ass, and Great Britain finally threw in the towel and decided to quit Palestine, leaving the Arab-Israeli struggle in its wake. There is plenty of blame to go around for the continuation of the conflict – Israel for denying basic human rights to Arabs in the “territories”; the Arabs for educating their children to hate Israel from an early age; the former Soviet Union for arming the Arab states to the teeth and encouraging them to keep the hostilities going; the United States for not being willing to publicly criticize Israel when criticism is due.
But the British never owned up to their share of the blame. They never forgave Israel for daring to stand up to their mighty empire. While this resentment may have been driven underground for awhile, it was there in the background, in the nation’s collective unconscious, to use Jung’s term. And today it has surfaced again, in the writings of Cockburn, Hitchens, Judt, et. al.
As we speak, British commentators (Alexander Cockburn, Tony Judt, Christopher Hitchens) are all agog in a frenzy, not only criticizing Israel, which is their right, but presenting its mere existence, and that of the Zionist movement, as a former of injustice, with a vituperation more worthy of a pro wrestling villain than of serious students of world affairs.
Also, British academics have been in the forefront of the movement to boycott cooperation with Israeli universities – a move that is somewhat odd, since Israeli academics have been among the most strident critics of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. When an Israeli professor visiting Britain told one of the Brits that the Israeli-Arab conflict (or, if you will, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) was not one-sided, the British professor said, “Yes, it’s very one-sided.” Apparently that gentleman has never heard of suicide bombers. And apparently most of these critics have never heard of the substantial human rights violations found in Syria, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries—it’s only Israeli human rights violations that concern them.
To understand WHY the so many of the British hate Israel, we must go back into history. Specifically, we must go back to a part of history that’s basically been forgotten and many younger people are not even aware of – the British mandate over Palestine.
To put it briefly, after the British Army took Palestine from the Turks during World War I, the then-new League of Nations awarded Britain a “mandate” to govern Palestine. At the time, there were already severe tensions between two opposing nationalist movements – the Zionist movement and the Palestinian Arab nationalist movement. Britain had made conflicting pledges to both sides during World War I.
What the British should have done, and could have done, is to act as an honest broker, to try to reconcile the differences between the two groups and to help them come to an agreement. After all, there was lots of empty land in Palestine—and still is. But instead, Britain decided to play its little “divide and conquer” game, pitting groups against each other so as to strengthen its own hold on the country. This had worked in Ireland (well, up to a point) and in India—now it was Palestine’s turn.
First, British High Commissioner Herbert Samuel (ironically, a Jew) appointed extremist Amin al-Husseini as “grand mufti” of Jerusalem, when he could easily have appointed a more moderate candidate. Then, in 1929, after armed Arab gangs slaughtered scores of innocent Jews in Hebron and Safed, Britain didn’t vigorously hunt down those who incited the riots and bring them to justice. Instead, it decided that the whole thing had been provoked by Jewish immigration, and tried to limit it.
Even after World War II, when thousands of Jewish concentration camp survivors in the DP camps of Europe were clamoring to go to Palestine (and it is true, many did want to go to the U.S. instead), Britain refused to compromise. It wouldn’t even admit the 100,000 immigrants that the international community wanted. Instead, it basically imposed martial law on the country, setting up roadblocks, jailing people at random, and so on.
Unfortunately for the British, the Jews didn’t roll over like the ghetto Jews of medieval Europe. They organized, they demonstrated, they went on strike, and sometimes they committed acts of violence, the best known of which was the bombing of the King David Hotel. For several years, the country was in the midst of a virtual civil war between the British and the Jewish community. The Arabs were basically bystanders, and the Zionist movement, unfortunately, took the short-sighted and unrealistic position that Arab opposition to Zionism was artificially created by British imperialism.
At any rate, to put it crudely, we, the Jewish people, kicked Britain’s collective ass, and Great Britain finally threw in the towel and decided to quit Palestine, leaving the Arab-Israeli struggle in its wake. There is plenty of blame to go around for the continuation of the conflict – Israel for denying basic human rights to Arabs in the “territories”; the Arabs for educating their children to hate Israel from an early age; the former Soviet Union for arming the Arab states to the teeth and encouraging them to keep the hostilities going; the United States for not being willing to publicly criticize Israel when criticism is due.
But the British never owned up to their share of the blame. They never forgave Israel for daring to stand up to their mighty empire. While this resentment may have been driven underground for awhile, it was there in the background, in the nation’s collective unconscious, to use Jung’s term. And today it has surfaced again, in the writings of Cockburn, Hitchens, Judt, et. al.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
How to Make the MTA More Representative
By Raanan Geberer
First Published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle
The dust has settled by now, and the subway and bus fare hike is a reality. Politicians and the media are raging, pointing out that the transit agency actually has posted surpluses recently and given its executives huge bonuses. They demand that something be done to “roll back the fare hike.” But when in the history of the metropolitan area has a fare hike ever been rolled back?
Perhaps we should look at the MTA to understand why these problems exist.
Many people feel it was a big mistake to take the subways and buses out of the direct control of the city and put them under the authority of an independent agency. But Long Island and Westchester commuters have interests that are very similar to those of city transit riders. And, in my opinion, this is a good thing, because consolidation between the three main components of the MTA (New York City Transit, Long Island Railroad and MetroNorth) will help develop a unified transit system that will benefit everybody.
Instead, let us look at the nature of the MTA board. As the MTA’s own literature says, “Members are nominated by the governor, with four recommended by New York City’s mayor and one each by the county executives of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Dutchess, Orange, Rockland and Putnam Counties. The board also has six rotating non-voting seats held by representatives of organized labor and the Permanent Citizens Advisory Council, which serves as a voice for users of MTA and commuter facilities. All board members are confirmed by the New York State Senate.”
First of all, I say, let’s decrease the governor’s role. Sitting in Albany, the governor can’t be expected to be a big-time expert on transit in the metropolitan area. And while having the state Senate vote on appointees seems democratic, it really isn’t — why should someone from Syracuse have a voice on what is done with the “A” train? I say, put the MTA under the direct control of the municipalities and counties that are directly affected.
And while we’re at it, why not give each borough of New York City an additional, separate vote — something that Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz has long advocated? After all, Brooklyn probably has a large a population as Rockland or Orange counties.
Now, to the makeup of the board. Glancing through the biographies of the board members, I see only a few people who have any direct experience of being involved with mass transit — the representative of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Council and one person who once ran a trucking firm. The great majority are people with experience in the financial markets, such as the Office of Management and Budget, Shearson Lehman and Goldman Sachs — in other words, “bean counters.”
Of course, when dealing with a public agency that has large budgets, the presence of such financial watchdogs are necessary. But why so many? If I had my way, at least half of the appointees would have to be people with direct experience in mass transit — whether planners, engineers, Transport Workers Union leaders, managers, representatives of private bus companies, and so forth. Why not put professional transit planners on the board, for example?
One final note on the representatives of organized labor: While this writer in general is a supporter of unions, the only union that should be represented here is the Transport Workers Union, the union that deals directly with transportation. Why someone from, say, the Building Trades Council should be on the MTA board doesn’t make much sense to me. Most likely, he’s there as some kind of political reward for something.
Instead, why not put a representative of the city’s community boards on the MTA board? At least they’ll be closer to the concerns of the average New Yorker.
At any rate, these are some of my thoughts about the MTA.
First Published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle
The dust has settled by now, and the subway and bus fare hike is a reality. Politicians and the media are raging, pointing out that the transit agency actually has posted surpluses recently and given its executives huge bonuses. They demand that something be done to “roll back the fare hike.” But when in the history of the metropolitan area has a fare hike ever been rolled back?
Perhaps we should look at the MTA to understand why these problems exist.
Many people feel it was a big mistake to take the subways and buses out of the direct control of the city and put them under the authority of an independent agency. But Long Island and Westchester commuters have interests that are very similar to those of city transit riders. And, in my opinion, this is a good thing, because consolidation between the three main components of the MTA (New York City Transit, Long Island Railroad and MetroNorth) will help develop a unified transit system that will benefit everybody.
Instead, let us look at the nature of the MTA board. As the MTA’s own literature says, “Members are nominated by the governor, with four recommended by New York City’s mayor and one each by the county executives of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Dutchess, Orange, Rockland and Putnam Counties. The board also has six rotating non-voting seats held by representatives of organized labor and the Permanent Citizens Advisory Council, which serves as a voice for users of MTA and commuter facilities. All board members are confirmed by the New York State Senate.”
First of all, I say, let’s decrease the governor’s role. Sitting in Albany, the governor can’t be expected to be a big-time expert on transit in the metropolitan area. And while having the state Senate vote on appointees seems democratic, it really isn’t — why should someone from Syracuse have a voice on what is done with the “A” train? I say, put the MTA under the direct control of the municipalities and counties that are directly affected.
And while we’re at it, why not give each borough of New York City an additional, separate vote — something that Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz has long advocated? After all, Brooklyn probably has a large a population as Rockland or Orange counties.
Now, to the makeup of the board. Glancing through the biographies of the board members, I see only a few people who have any direct experience of being involved with mass transit — the representative of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Council and one person who once ran a trucking firm. The great majority are people with experience in the financial markets, such as the Office of Management and Budget, Shearson Lehman and Goldman Sachs — in other words, “bean counters.”
Of course, when dealing with a public agency that has large budgets, the presence of such financial watchdogs are necessary. But why so many? If I had my way, at least half of the appointees would have to be people with direct experience in mass transit — whether planners, engineers, Transport Workers Union leaders, managers, representatives of private bus companies, and so forth. Why not put professional transit planners on the board, for example?
One final note on the representatives of organized labor: While this writer in general is a supporter of unions, the only union that should be represented here is the Transport Workers Union, the union that deals directly with transportation. Why someone from, say, the Building Trades Council should be on the MTA board doesn’t make much sense to me. Most likely, he’s there as some kind of political reward for something.
Instead, why not put a representative of the city’s community boards on the MTA board? At least they’ll be closer to the concerns of the average New Yorker.
At any rate, these are some of my thoughts about the MTA.
Friday, January 4, 2008
The PIano
By Raanan Geberer
Published in 2009 on the "Mr. Beller's Neighborhood" web site.
The old upright piano, with its legend “Spector, New York City,” was in the living room from my earliest recollection until the day my father died. He must have brought it sometime in the early ‘50s, after he and Mom came back from a failed attempt to establish themselves in Israel, after Mom’s asthma got so bad that a doctor advised them to leave the country.
Mom’s asthma didn’t get much better in New York, however, and my father, increasingly, took to the piano and his other hobby, stamp collecting, to escape both his family and his troubled work life – in the early days, he was always changing jobs, by necessity. Dad would spend hours playing Brahms, Schumann, Clementi, Chopin. At the end, he would always start playing an old Russian folk song called “Two Guitars” and stare wistfully into space. It’s my belief that this was a song that he used to play, during his childhood, as a duet with his violin-playing brother, who died an untimely death in the late ’40s.
When I was eight years old or so, Dad started teaching me to play the piano. At first, I really enjoyed it. But it soon became clear to me that I had no say in what I played – I’d have to play what he wanted me to play. And if I played something incorrectly or made an insufficient effort, he’d yell: “You idiot! Wrong! WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!”
By the time I was 12, I told Dad I didn’t want to take lessons anymore, although I never stopped playing, on and off. Dad tried to teach my brother too, but my brother, more restless and angry and less tolerant of our parents, only lasted six months or so with Dad as a teacher. Over the years, my brother would pick up several different instruments – the cello, the saxophone, the bass, the guitar – but not the piano.
Anyway, that same year, when I was 12, the Beatles came to America. I would often go to the piano and try to play the Beatles, the Dave Clark Five, Motown. This drove my father nuts. “That’s not music! THAT’S JUST BANGING!” he’d say. He’d take to locking the piano with a key he had, just so that I wouldn’t play it when he was in the house. And the worst of it was that my father definitely didn’t believe in the golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” There was only one TV in the house, and it, too, was in the living room. Many was the time that I’d have to wait what seemed like an eternity until my father finished practicing piano for the night, until I could watch one of my favorite TV programs. It’s probably thanks to him that I never really grew to like classical music (Bach and Handel excepted).
I moved out of the house, then moved back, then moved out again, then moved back again, then moved out for good, but the piano was always there. The unsteady piano bench, with its wobbly legs, finally went the way of all wood, but the piano itself remained. In the early days he’d call piano tuners periodically, but when he got older, especially after my mother died, he let things go, and the piano’s sound became tinny. Still, he practiced every day.
Finally, in 2004, he died. One day, while going to Dad’s Co-op City apartment to clean up, I met a young pre-adolescent girl and her mother in the hallway. I told them Dad had died. “I knew it,” the girl said. “I haven’t hearing him playing his piano for a long time. I used to hear him every day! I knew all his songs!” I was a little thrown off – I don’t know if you can call a Bach fugue a “song” – but it soon occurred to me that he hand’t changed these “songs” in 35 years. Once, a friend had tried to give him some new sheet music – I remember “Mussogursky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” was one of them – and Dad tried to make a go of it, but he soon fell back on the tried and true. The pieces he played regularly were likely the same ones he’d played back in the East Bronx, during his childhood in the 1930s.
My brother’s son Joseph, a rock musician in his 20s, wanted the piano. He had, my brother told me, written many of his own songs on this piano. Joseph really loved my father and visited him all the time. Dad probably acted differently with his grandson than he had with his own children. At any rate, the movers soon came, and the piano was wheeled away after 25 or so years in Marble Hill and 35 years in Co-op City, gone to Queens and a new life.
Published in 2009 on the "Mr. Beller's Neighborhood" web site.
The old upright piano, with its legend “Spector, New York City,” was in the living room from my earliest recollection until the day my father died. He must have brought it sometime in the early ‘50s, after he and Mom came back from a failed attempt to establish themselves in Israel, after Mom’s asthma got so bad that a doctor advised them to leave the country.
Mom’s asthma didn’t get much better in New York, however, and my father, increasingly, took to the piano and his other hobby, stamp collecting, to escape both his family and his troubled work life – in the early days, he was always changing jobs, by necessity. Dad would spend hours playing Brahms, Schumann, Clementi, Chopin. At the end, he would always start playing an old Russian folk song called “Two Guitars” and stare wistfully into space. It’s my belief that this was a song that he used to play, during his childhood, as a duet with his violin-playing brother, who died an untimely death in the late ’40s.
When I was eight years old or so, Dad started teaching me to play the piano. At first, I really enjoyed it. But it soon became clear to me that I had no say in what I played – I’d have to play what he wanted me to play. And if I played something incorrectly or made an insufficient effort, he’d yell: “You idiot! Wrong! WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!”
By the time I was 12, I told Dad I didn’t want to take lessons anymore, although I never stopped playing, on and off. Dad tried to teach my brother too, but my brother, more restless and angry and less tolerant of our parents, only lasted six months or so with Dad as a teacher. Over the years, my brother would pick up several different instruments – the cello, the saxophone, the bass, the guitar – but not the piano.
Anyway, that same year, when I was 12, the Beatles came to America. I would often go to the piano and try to play the Beatles, the Dave Clark Five, Motown. This drove my father nuts. “That’s not music! THAT’S JUST BANGING!” he’d say. He’d take to locking the piano with a key he had, just so that I wouldn’t play it when he was in the house. And the worst of it was that my father definitely didn’t believe in the golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” There was only one TV in the house, and it, too, was in the living room. Many was the time that I’d have to wait what seemed like an eternity until my father finished practicing piano for the night, until I could watch one of my favorite TV programs. It’s probably thanks to him that I never really grew to like classical music (Bach and Handel excepted).
I moved out of the house, then moved back, then moved out again, then moved back again, then moved out for good, but the piano was always there. The unsteady piano bench, with its wobbly legs, finally went the way of all wood, but the piano itself remained. In the early days he’d call piano tuners periodically, but when he got older, especially after my mother died, he let things go, and the piano’s sound became tinny. Still, he practiced every day.
Finally, in 2004, he died. One day, while going to Dad’s Co-op City apartment to clean up, I met a young pre-adolescent girl and her mother in the hallway. I told them Dad had died. “I knew it,” the girl said. “I haven’t hearing him playing his piano for a long time. I used to hear him every day! I knew all his songs!” I was a little thrown off – I don’t know if you can call a Bach fugue a “song” – but it soon occurred to me that he hand’t changed these “songs” in 35 years. Once, a friend had tried to give him some new sheet music – I remember “Mussogursky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” was one of them – and Dad tried to make a go of it, but he soon fell back on the tried and true. The pieces he played regularly were likely the same ones he’d played back in the East Bronx, during his childhood in the 1930s.
My brother’s son Joseph, a rock musician in his 20s, wanted the piano. He had, my brother told me, written many of his own songs on this piano. Joseph really loved my father and visited him all the time. Dad probably acted differently with his grandson than he had with his own children. At any rate, the movers soon came, and the piano was wheeled away after 25 or so years in Marble Hill and 35 years in Co-op City, gone to Queens and a new life.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Memories of Life at the Hudson Dispatch
By Raanan Geberer
Originally Published in the "Current" section of the "Hudson Reporter"
Until the early '90s, there was not one but two daily newspapers in Hudson County - the Jersey Journal and the now-defunct Hudson Dispatch, which published in Union City. The Dispatch, with its trademark logo of a rooster and slogan, "First Thing in the Morning," was a fixture in the area for more than 100 years. I worked on the night copy desk on the Dispatch during the mid-1980s, and here are some of my memories: (Editor's note: the author changed the names to protect the innocent!)
The Dispatch's main office was on Bergenline Avenue, but I was hardly ever there. Because we co-published with the Paterson News, we copy editors worked in Paterson. The Dispatch's copy desk mainly consisted of young men in their 20s and early 30s; the News' copy desk mainly consisted of young women around the same age.
Still, there were no romances that I remember, possibly because the night editor of the News was a tough, no-nonsense broad who regularly sent memos to her staff pointing out the errors they had made the night before. There were quite a few interesting people on the Dispatch copy desk. Take Tim M., who may have been a copy editor but his main passion was sports, which he would talk about for hours. When any of the reporters submitted a sports story, he would grab it and claim editing rights. He sometimes came to work in a full New Jersey Devils uniform.
Then, there was Ed L. Ed's father was an old-time beatnik who used to read the East Village Other and knew people like Tuli Kupferberg and Allen Ginsberg. Ed himself was an aficionado of '40s and '50s blues and R&B singers. Many were the times that, while editing copy, Ed would be singing songs like Hank Ballard's "Annie had a baby, she can't work no more..." Once, a new, very preppy female copy editor asked Ed whether he knew the name of "that famous black singer, you know who I mean, he's always into liberal causes..." She meant Harry Belafonte, but Ed kept me in stitches, asking her, "Who do you mean? Big Joe Turner? Howling Wolf? Bullmoose Jackson? T-Bone Walker?" naming every old-time blues singer he could think of.
The guy who actually routed the stories onto the pages after we edited them was Joe T., who, at the age of 38 or so, seemed old to us. Joe, one of the few people on the desk who had actually grown up in Hudson County, also served in the National Guard and would take weeks off at a time. He walked with a limp as the result of an old Vietnam injury, but he was a hard-boiled, no-nonsense SOB. Once, an angry reporter called him on the phone and asked him why he had cut his lead into two sentences. "Because it's too long, that's why!" Joe growled. "Then take my name off it!" the reporter said. "Fine," Joe said and then slammed down the phone.
Only one editor was older than Joe - Mike O'Leary, who was almost 70. Mike had many monk-like traits - for example, he had a germ phobia. Whenever he touched a doorknob or someone shook his hand, he would wash his hands about 10 times and then shake them into the air because he didn't trust the cleanliness of the paper towels. His parsimony was legendary - although he reputedly had accounts in a dozen banks, he only owned two pairs of pants and three shirts, each of which he wore for a week at a time.
His politics were ultra-right wing - he objected to the Martin Luther King holiday and defended Joe McCarthy. When I challenged him, he told me, "Look, I know you're Jewish and you're an OK guy, but you're too young to remember Jewish Communism." I tried to explain to him that even in its heyday, around 1936 or so, "Jewish Communism" only represented a minority of the Jewish community, but that didn't seem to register with him. Mike definitely seemed to have a thing about Jews. "Years ago, when I was workin' as an insurance agent, I found myself on Kings Highway in Brooklyn," he recounted, "but those Jewish neighborhoods didn't have any bars! I had to settle for one of those egg cream joints!"
Still, everyone respected Mike. He was meticulous when it came to grammar and spelling. Most of us, myself included, were only working as copy editors because jobs in journalism were scarce and we would rather have been reporters or "regular" editors. But Mike was a copy editor's copy editor.
Occasionally, the publisher, Louis J., would come in. Louis, a young guy not much older than most of us, was tall, thin, immaculately dressed, and handsome. Although he was born into the wealthy family that owned the paper, he had insisted on starting out as a reporter and working his way up. He was the recipient of many awards, including one from the Police Athletic League for coaching a softball team.
But, I soon learned, he wasn't always impartial. A supermarket in Hudson County went on strike. This supermarket was one of our biggest advertisers. Louis, who normally didn't interfere with the news people, insisted on seeing every story about the strike.
When the final vote was on the table, he personally wrote the headline: "It's Up to the Strikers Now," implying that the whole thing was basically the union's fault. Most of us on the desk were at least liberal, and a few were still influenced by the radical politics of the then-recent '60s and '70s. We resented Louis for doing this, but we went along with it because we had to. The next day, the strike was settled.
Louis seemed to have everything - until the day we came in and learned that he had been found dead in his car the night before. The rumor was that it was a love-triangle kind of thing. More than one of us thought of Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem "Richard Cory."
Prophetic phrasing
In addition to editing reporters' local stories, we worked on wire stories. Our main criteria for editing wire copy seemed to be stressing any local angle and bringing it to the top. "Hey, if the World Trade Center blew up and 100 people died," one guy joked, "our headline would be, 'Two New Jersey residents die in World Trade Center!'" This was in 1985. Years later, I wondered, if the paper had lasted until the real 9/11 tragedy, whether we would have covered it in the same narrow-minded way.
No, all wasn't fun and games at the Dispatch, at least not for me. Within a few weeks after I had started there, I began to resent the 4 p.m. to 12 a.m. schedule because it didn't allow me much time for a social life. Worse, you didn't always get the same days off every week, at least not during your first year or so. We worked in a fairly dangerous neighborhood and there were no good restaurants around, so I had few alternatives to the vending machine with its chicken patties and "microwave pancakes."
The schedule threw my system off and may have contributed to my making constant mistakes, some of which moved the chief editor to put me on probation more than once. I began looking for another job, and almost two years after I started at the Dispatch, I found one, on a trade magazine in New York City.
The staff threw a goodbye party for me at the Hoboken Clam House, one of Frank Sinatra's old hangouts. The Clam House isn't there anymore, and neither is Sinatra. Interestingly, Al O'Leary used to tell me that one or two members of the Hoboken Four, the group Frank sang with as a teenager, were still living in the mile-square city in obscurity during the '80s.
I'll leave you with a headline I once wrote for a story about the way a snowstorm affected one of the smaller Hudson municipalities. I thought it was the best headline I ever wrote, but the chief editor felt otherwise, so it was never published. Here it is: "Little Guttenberg Fights the Big Snowstorm."
Hudson Dispatch, rest in peace.
Originally Published in the "Current" section of the "Hudson Reporter"
Until the early '90s, there was not one but two daily newspapers in Hudson County - the Jersey Journal and the now-defunct Hudson Dispatch, which published in Union City. The Dispatch, with its trademark logo of a rooster and slogan, "First Thing in the Morning," was a fixture in the area for more than 100 years. I worked on the night copy desk on the Dispatch during the mid-1980s, and here are some of my memories: (Editor's note: the author changed the names to protect the innocent!)
The Dispatch's main office was on Bergenline Avenue, but I was hardly ever there. Because we co-published with the Paterson News, we copy editors worked in Paterson. The Dispatch's copy desk mainly consisted of young men in their 20s and early 30s; the News' copy desk mainly consisted of young women around the same age.
Still, there were no romances that I remember, possibly because the night editor of the News was a tough, no-nonsense broad who regularly sent memos to her staff pointing out the errors they had made the night before. There were quite a few interesting people on the Dispatch copy desk. Take Tim M., who may have been a copy editor but his main passion was sports, which he would talk about for hours. When any of the reporters submitted a sports story, he would grab it and claim editing rights. He sometimes came to work in a full New Jersey Devils uniform.
Then, there was Ed L. Ed's father was an old-time beatnik who used to read the East Village Other and knew people like Tuli Kupferberg and Allen Ginsberg. Ed himself was an aficionado of '40s and '50s blues and R&B singers. Many were the times that, while editing copy, Ed would be singing songs like Hank Ballard's "Annie had a baby, she can't work no more..." Once, a new, very preppy female copy editor asked Ed whether he knew the name of "that famous black singer, you know who I mean, he's always into liberal causes..." She meant Harry Belafonte, but Ed kept me in stitches, asking her, "Who do you mean? Big Joe Turner? Howling Wolf? Bullmoose Jackson? T-Bone Walker?" naming every old-time blues singer he could think of.
The guy who actually routed the stories onto the pages after we edited them was Joe T., who, at the age of 38 or so, seemed old to us. Joe, one of the few people on the desk who had actually grown up in Hudson County, also served in the National Guard and would take weeks off at a time. He walked with a limp as the result of an old Vietnam injury, but he was a hard-boiled, no-nonsense SOB. Once, an angry reporter called him on the phone and asked him why he had cut his lead into two sentences. "Because it's too long, that's why!" Joe growled. "Then take my name off it!" the reporter said. "Fine," Joe said and then slammed down the phone.
Only one editor was older than Joe - Mike O'Leary, who was almost 70. Mike had many monk-like traits - for example, he had a germ phobia. Whenever he touched a doorknob or someone shook his hand, he would wash his hands about 10 times and then shake them into the air because he didn't trust the cleanliness of the paper towels. His parsimony was legendary - although he reputedly had accounts in a dozen banks, he only owned two pairs of pants and three shirts, each of which he wore for a week at a time.
His politics were ultra-right wing - he objected to the Martin Luther King holiday and defended Joe McCarthy. When I challenged him, he told me, "Look, I know you're Jewish and you're an OK guy, but you're too young to remember Jewish Communism." I tried to explain to him that even in its heyday, around 1936 or so, "Jewish Communism" only represented a minority of the Jewish community, but that didn't seem to register with him. Mike definitely seemed to have a thing about Jews. "Years ago, when I was workin' as an insurance agent, I found myself on Kings Highway in Brooklyn," he recounted, "but those Jewish neighborhoods didn't have any bars! I had to settle for one of those egg cream joints!"
Still, everyone respected Mike. He was meticulous when it came to grammar and spelling. Most of us, myself included, were only working as copy editors because jobs in journalism were scarce and we would rather have been reporters or "regular" editors. But Mike was a copy editor's copy editor.
Occasionally, the publisher, Louis J., would come in. Louis, a young guy not much older than most of us, was tall, thin, immaculately dressed, and handsome. Although he was born into the wealthy family that owned the paper, he had insisted on starting out as a reporter and working his way up. He was the recipient of many awards, including one from the Police Athletic League for coaching a softball team.
But, I soon learned, he wasn't always impartial. A supermarket in Hudson County went on strike. This supermarket was one of our biggest advertisers. Louis, who normally didn't interfere with the news people, insisted on seeing every story about the strike.
When the final vote was on the table, he personally wrote the headline: "It's Up to the Strikers Now," implying that the whole thing was basically the union's fault. Most of us on the desk were at least liberal, and a few were still influenced by the radical politics of the then-recent '60s and '70s. We resented Louis for doing this, but we went along with it because we had to. The next day, the strike was settled.
Louis seemed to have everything - until the day we came in and learned that he had been found dead in his car the night before. The rumor was that it was a love-triangle kind of thing. More than one of us thought of Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem "Richard Cory."
Prophetic phrasing
In addition to editing reporters' local stories, we worked on wire stories. Our main criteria for editing wire copy seemed to be stressing any local angle and bringing it to the top. "Hey, if the World Trade Center blew up and 100 people died," one guy joked, "our headline would be, 'Two New Jersey residents die in World Trade Center!'" This was in 1985. Years later, I wondered, if the paper had lasted until the real 9/11 tragedy, whether we would have covered it in the same narrow-minded way.
No, all wasn't fun and games at the Dispatch, at least not for me. Within a few weeks after I had started there, I began to resent the 4 p.m. to 12 a.m. schedule because it didn't allow me much time for a social life. Worse, you didn't always get the same days off every week, at least not during your first year or so. We worked in a fairly dangerous neighborhood and there were no good restaurants around, so I had few alternatives to the vending machine with its chicken patties and "microwave pancakes."
The schedule threw my system off and may have contributed to my making constant mistakes, some of which moved the chief editor to put me on probation more than once. I began looking for another job, and almost two years after I started at the Dispatch, I found one, on a trade magazine in New York City.
The staff threw a goodbye party for me at the Hoboken Clam House, one of Frank Sinatra's old hangouts. The Clam House isn't there anymore, and neither is Sinatra. Interestingly, Al O'Leary used to tell me that one or two members of the Hoboken Four, the group Frank sang with as a teenager, were still living in the mile-square city in obscurity during the '80s.
I'll leave you with a headline I once wrote for a story about the way a snowstorm affected one of the smaller Hudson municipalities. I thought it was the best headline I ever wrote, but the chief editor felt otherwise, so it was never published. Here it is: "Little Guttenberg Fights the Big Snowstorm."
Hudson Dispatch, rest in peace.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
